[shadowgovt]

> these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look

This is likely true. Most of the discussion around "the algorithm" is mainly centered around whether there's something about the way the major online sharing channels are selecting what to present that acts as a funnel towards QAnon and other radical theories, not whether people already dedicated to finding such information can find it.

[pixl97]

YT: "you searched WWII", recommended video is "how to become a nazi in 2022"

I had to click do not recommend this content on a ton of videos.

[shadowgovt]

Precisely. If I had to hazard a guess, I think their algorithm is hyper-optimizing for linkages, and when linkages are broad but tenuous, it hyper-optimizes for the ones with only the slightest dominance.

Hypothetically: all sorts of people are interested in the history of World War II... it's a big war, it defined politics for over half a century, and it's taught every year in the history classes of at least a hundred nations. So you're looking at a topic with hundreds of "also likes" connections but no strong winner.

Perhaps there is a 0.000001% chance that if you watch a WWII video, your next video will be one on modern Nazism (including recruitment videos). I wonder if YouTube's algorithm boosts that small fluctuation in a sea of noise into a single recommendation result (or even grabs the top 5, but the signal is so noisy that this one still shows up in that top 5)?