cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3320637
YouTube and Reddit are sued for allegedly enabling the racist mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead::The complementary lawsuits claim that the massacre in 2022 was made possible by tech giants, a local gun shop, and the gunman’s parents.
I think the thing isn’t just providing access to the content, but using algorithms to promote how likely it is for deranged people to view more and more content that fuel their motives for hateful acts instead of trying to reduce how often that content is seen, all because they make more money if they watch more content, wether it is harmful or not.
What if it isn’t algorithms but upvotes? What if Lemmy is next?
Yeah, the difference is in whether or not the company is choosing what to put in front of a viewer’s eyes.
For the most part an ISP just shows people what they request. If someone gets bomb making directions from YouTube it would be insane to sue AT&T because AT&T delivered the appropriate packets when someone went to YouTube.
On the other end of the spectrum is something like Fox News. They hire every host, give them timeslots, have the opportunity to vet guests, accept advertising money to run against their content, and so on.
Section 512 of the DMCA treats “online service providers” like YouTube and Reddit as if they’re just ISPs, merely hosting content that is generated by users. OTOH, YouTube and Reddit use ML systems to decide what the users are shown. In the case of YouTube, the push to suggest content to users is pretty strong. You could argue they’re much closer to the Fox News side of things than to the ISP side these days. There’s no human making the decisions on what content should be shown, but does that matter?
Yep. I often fall asleep to long YouTube videos that are science or history related. The algorithm is the reason why I wake up at 3am to Joe Rogan. It’s like a terrible autocomplete.
The algorithm is tailored to you. This says more about you. I never get recommended Rogan.