It's easy to tell that it's happening because you will see obscure, random news/opinions channels with high view counts. Something you can only get when you at some point have been promoted by Youtube.
I watched a Youtube video about how birds aren't real, that the US government killed them all and replaced them with surveillance drones.
There is no doubt I watched that. Nor is there any doubt that it impacted my recommendations.
The question is, what is the likelihood of it having radicalized me into believing this? Is Youtube successfully recruiting people to genuinely believe birds aren't real/aliens/etc. on a wide scale? I do not believe that is the case. I'm not claiming it has zero impact on this. I'm saying I'm skeptical that the scale is meaningful, especially compared to legacy media.
What I know to be certain is that traditional/legacy/corporate media is constantly and successfully recruiting people into believing conspiracy theories on a broad scale like Iraq had WMDs and Trump was a Russian asset. And yet there is not serious talk about how the corporate media is "infamous for getting people radicalized."
Which legacy media is not making a streaming migration effort currently with enough sway to manipulate the narrative? I'm not aware of any major players not moving to svod or avod in the US.
All you need to know is Youtube, one of the biggest and most popular streaming services with young people, is literally turning your children into Nazis.
I've had a Google account for... 15+ years? and have never really interacted on YouTube, in large part because I don't want to give Google my data. Just recently though I've been getting more into hobbyist boardgaming and wanted to help out some of the little guys in this niche by giving them some likes and subscribes.
So, now it's feeding me incel videos. Maybe this just is giving me more info than I want about people who play board games. But wow, Google.
I believe you. The question is not whether you were fed conspiracy theories, it's how effective were they and "compared to what?" Because that's what's implied by these articles/studies. They claim "people are radicalized," which is very different than "people watched some UFO videos."
How many people watched Youtube videos and were radicalized into believing in flat earth, aliens, etc?
Compare that to how many people watched legacy media and were radicalized into believing that Iraq had nukes and Trump was a Russian agent?
It's easy to tell that it's happening because you will see obscure, random news/opinions channels with high view counts. Something you can only get when you at some point have been promoted by Youtube.