Google and YouTube executives ignored warnings on toxic video content, now we're all paying the price

The epic battle inside YouTube over content moderation and recommendation algorithms is detailed brilliantly in a damning new report from Mark Bergen at Bloomberg News.

New story: I spent weeks talking to folks who've worked at YouTube (and Google) about how the company has wrestled with recommendations, conspiracy theories and radicalism. https://t.co/FHmpHPyaz3

— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) April 2, 2019

Bottom line: YouTube failed to moderate extremely harmful content on its platform, and we are all paying the price.

"Scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the worlds largest video site surfaced and spread... Each time they got the same basic response: Dont rock the boat."

Executives sacrificed everything for engagement, allowing conspiracies and disinfo campaigns to spread, and killing proposals from workers that would have changed the technology that recommends these toxic videos, staff say.

Excerpt:

The conundrum isnt just that videos questioning the moon landing or the efficacy of vaccines are on YouTube. The massive library, generated by users with little editorial oversight, is bound to have untrue nonsense. Instead, YouTubes problem is that it allows the nonsense to flourish. And, in some cases, through its powerful artificial intelligence system, it even provides the fuel that lets it spread.

Wojcicki and her deputies know this. In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the worlds largest video site surfaced and spread.