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Comment by DavidWoof | Hacker News Reader

The focus of this article is on right-wing extreme content, but I think the tendency is true on both sides. The fact is that partisans are more likely to seek out news content, and partisans are happier with content that matches their prior viewpoint. And so the extreme content rises in popularity and is presented as the recommended option to the less partisan.

It's a worthwhile question as to whether this is a flaw in the algorithm or if the algorithm is simply accurately mirroring democratic preferences. Maybe everyone's tendency is toward more politically extreme content, and youtube is simply giving the people what they want. Which is, after all, what YouTube probably sees as the correct goal.

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I suspect that enough differences may exist between liberal and conservative subpopulations that there may be differences in the media they prefer to produce and consume.

For example, talk radio is much more popular for the right wing than the left. Left wing commentators and performers have occasionally tried to break into talk radio and they generally don't accrue an audience.

Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube in particular (or any one site by itself) had more right-wing extreme content than left-wing extreme content. Left-wing extreme content may exist in equal proportion overall without having much of a presence specifically on YouTube.

Podcasts are starting to become a more varied mix of left and right (though popularity-wise, still probably skewed to the right).

The extreme left aren't involved in mass murder at anything like the extent that the extreme right are.

When looking at HVE groups the far left appears rarely, those lists are full of either militant Islamist or Far Right groups.

The focus on the far right happens because it's the far right that are murdering people.

What is HVE? What far-right groups are you referring to specifically?

Homegrown Violent Extremists

There's been numerous reporting on the surge in popularity of anti-government militia groups, tho it looks like most of it comes back to a report by Southern Law Poverty Center, which you may or may not take as a reliable source.

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/20090731/second-wave-return-militi...

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You have to be willfully blind not to see the obvious connection between far right groups and violence. Both the US and the UK have seen dramatic increases in far right terrorist attacks and equivocating this clear, observable phenomenon with bogeymen on the left is very disingenuous. If you're actually concerned with rising extremism you'd focus on the more pressing issue which is very much not the anti-imperialists.

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The extreme right are currently mass murdering people? What? Where?

Well, most recently I've heard about hundreds being killed in Nigeria by Boko Haram and hundreds of social leaders murdered recently in Colombia. Plus whatever countries the US is currently slaughtering people in.

I'm not familiar with the situation in Colombia, but Boko Haram is extreme right?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram#Ideology

Also, the US is extreme right? I would consider them to be globalists, which is quite the opposite in my book.

Citations please

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It is important not to put the cart before the horse, its youtube that controls recommendations, thought various mostly opaque means.

Do not confuse that with what people want, you hear plenty of stories about how somebody watched some $stupid_shit and then their recommendations are pure $stupid_shit for the next two weeks.

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