YouTube’s algorithm is hurting America far more than Russian trolls ever could

Remember when we used to think the greatest threat we faced from Artificial Intelligence was that it would become Skynet and launch our entire nuclear arsenal, wiping out the human race? 

Good times. 

But on the evidence of YouTube’s latest mess, AI doesn’t even need to bother blowing us up — it can just dumb us down and push endless conspiracy theory videos on us. That way we’ll get so confused about the truth, we won’t take any action to stop killing ourselves.

What YouTube mess do I mean, exactly? Oh, just the fact that the Google-owned video company has pushed videos about the Parkland shooting survivors — specifically, a clip created to support the outrageous lie that one student is a “crisis actor” because he showed up in a news segment in California some months back — to the very top of its influential Trending section.  Read more…

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