#CrowderExposesYoutube: There is more and less to the story.
Full disclosure. I am a strong supporter of Representative Tulsi Gabbard for President. You can check my Facebook, Twitter, and Medium footprint and it will become apparent.
One of the reasons I support her, is because of her principled and honest positions. I am attracted to truth and honesty, and while it is easy to turn a blind eye to situations that could help her campaign, I also cannot accept interpretations that are not based in reality.
Steven Crowder has claimed that he found evidence of election tampering by YouTube, and many people are making the hashtag #CrowderExposesYouTube trend in twitter.
Some of my professional work involves using A.I. developed by Facebook and Google, and applied to electronic manufacturing. This gives me sufficient information to map Steven’s observations with how I would expect the YouTube preference algorithms to work.
First, one must realize the recommendations provided by YouTube are generated by an A.I. which takes into account a relative score for creators. This has been widely discussed elsewhere, when independent content creators stated to see a decrease in their views. Mainly benefiting larger corporations. This was done in order to retain advertisers in YouTube by making it more “family friendly”.
Which brings to Steven’s observations.
As there was very limited coverage by mainstream channels for Tulsi Gabbard, the main results pointed to her own channel. However, as the Clinton story developed, many mainstream news outlets developed their own content, which in turn pushed Tulsi’s own content down.
The second observation is that Tulsi’s content was not updated in other countries, this is because there is a latency between the system since they take into account geography in the algorithm to determine the recommendations. However, after a few days, the system will relax into a steady-state system thus providing a more consistent set of results.
What does this tell us?
- The evidence DOES not suggest manual manipulation of the results. The behavior observed and reported by Steven Crowder is consistent with the current policies of YouTube and their preference for larger channels and preferred partners.
- The evidence DOES suggest the impact of large corporations in the public discourse. With the YouTube algorithm changes, it will become increasingly difficult for independent channels to have their “viral moment”, in a way destroying the sense of independence that YouTube used to provide to its users since its creation.
Does that mean that there is no intervention against Tulsi in the media? No, but that’s a different story, and one I covered in a different article, as to how to recognize a purposeful media blackout.
#Peace.