I think YouTube has just exposed the kind of content people were already interested in, and possibly consuming outside of the public eye. We find it frightening that people readily click on abhorrent content. When they probably were doing it over other platforms earlier. The internet had gore videos for the longest time. I remember a shotgun suicide video that kids in my school used to shock each other with. If Google as a private company chooses to ban content, than that is their right, but an apriori expectation that an entertainment platform should control peoples social behavior and enforce morality is harmful in a free society IMHO.
People were fueling industries of creatively bankrupt content well before the Internet came around, just look at the long term existence of tabloids.
Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote.
I think the analogy to junk food is instructive. Both fast food and YouTube maximise revenue while minimising costs by exploiting human flaws and foibles, and do so much more effectively than was possible 100 years ago. It is creating an environment that is radically different than the one we evolved in.
Watching hours of YouTube - obesity of the mind. Kind of.
>Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote.
Well, YouTube (or any advertising platform) also wants people clicking on ads and actually buying things, not just graze. AFAIK they already demonetize content that is not advertiser friendly, and thus de-prioritize it. Busy professionals with limited free time are your best bet for people with a lot of disposable income. If anything YouTube optimizes for content that is safe-for-work, and will quickly lead to you opening your wallet. But yes, I think this is a large scale multi-variate problem, and individual simple metrics don't cut it.
