Member-only story
YouTube’s recommendation algorithm has been at the center of discussions surrounding online radicalization because of its much-loathed ‘rabbit-hole effect’ and its subsequent tendency to further push down audiences down an ever-deepening den of extremist content through the recommendation tab when the starting point could’ve been something completely benign, or even remarkably unpolitical.
The algorithm was very obviously built to support YouTube’s aspirations for a greater capability to capitalize on a business that used to cost them as much money as it did generate. The platform thus kept searching for avenues of growth, and one of them had to involve ways to get users to consume more content on its platform. The implementation of such measures hasn’t been always transparent in the past, but YouTube continued marching forth, and they finally were able to hit the ever-so-elusive “1 billion hour per day watchtime” goal that they’ve been working to solve since 2012. YouTube now started to look like a much more sensible business venture for Google, but its unconditional stride towards hitting that goal started to show its wrinkles, and it appeared as though that YouTube hasn’t only found a way to make…
