A Former Alt-Right YouTuber Explains His Methods

The videos were tailored for the “echo chamber” that is often created by social media networks like YouTube. To keep you watching, YouTube serves up videos similar to those you have watched before. But the longer someone watches, the more extreme the videos can become.

“It can create these very radical people who are like gurus,” said Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer who has been critical of the way the company’s algorithms pushed people to extreme content. “In terms of watch time, a guru is wonderful.”

Tech companies, regulators and individuals across the globe are struggling to understand and control the enormous power of YouTube and other social media services. In 2019, YouTube made “important changes to how we recommend videos and prevent the spread of misinformation and hateful content,” Farshad Shadloo, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement. It barred Mr. Molyneaux and Mr. Jones. But extreme videos continue to spread.

In time, Mr. Robertson said, he realized that the videos he worked on stoked dangerous hatred. And in 2019, at a conference in Britain run by a left-wing newspaper, The Byline Times, Mr. Robertson distanced himself from his work with the far right. His change of heart was met with some skepticism.

“He was presented as a prodigal son,” said Louise Raw, an antifascist activist who was onstage for Mr. Robertson’s mea culpa. “But he has not been held to account.”

Now, Mr. Robertson is detailing the ways he and his collaborators searched for confrontations to gain popularity on YouTube.

Efforts to contact Mr. Robinson were unsuccessful, and Mr. Jones did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Ms. Southern said she should not be described as a far-right activist, saying she is merely a conservative. She was not involved in “some horrible far-right grift that tried to deceive people into watching our content,” she added. “We were just doing what any other YouTuber does.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/technology/alt-right-youtube-algorithm.html