In a story that should have surprised no one, Mark Bergen of Bloomberg reported this week on YouTube’s history of prioritizing scale and profit over the well-being of its users, harnessing what its own engineers apparently call “bad virality” to optimize for engagement. “The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube,” Bergen writes. “The massive ‘library,’ generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.”
Bad Virality
Bad Virality
Bad Virality
In a story that should have surprised no one, Mark Bergen of Bloomberg reported this week on YouTube’s history of prioritizing scale and profit over the well-being of its users, harnessing what its own engineers apparently call “bad virality” to optimize for engagement. “The conundrum isn’t just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube,” Bergen writes. “The massive ‘library,’ generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTube’s problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.”