318

Alex Jones: Conspiracy theorist returns to X after Elon Musk poll (www.bbc.com)

submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has had his account on X - formerly Twitter - reinstated by Elon Musk.

Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.

Around 70% of roughly two million respondents voted to lift the ban.

Jones is most notorious for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults died, was "staged".

He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Dee@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I have never watched more than 10%

You gave 10% engagement and voted with your downvote! Double engagement!

[-] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago

From socialvideoplaza.com

You've probably heard the myth that dislikes are a form of engagement. And since engagement is the social currency in which YouTube videos are paid, it makes your video perform better in the YouTube rankings. If that information was true in the first place, it is outdated now.

[the dislike button] is used in the algorithm for a couple of things: It is a sign to the algorithm that it should suggest less videos of that creator to the viewer.

[-] Dee@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Also from socialvideoplaza.com

This site is not a part of the YouTube website or Alphabet. Additionally, this site is not endorsed by YouTube in any way.

Your random quote from a random website doesn't mean much against the experience of myself and others and how massively disliked videos still get tons of traffic. If you don't want to see certain content don't dislike, just keep moving and don't engage at all. My feed only improved after doing this, when I was disliking videos I kept getting the content I disliked. I didn't engage and now I don't see content I don't want to anymore.

[-] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you're going to keep posting this same factually incorrect comment, I'll keep posting my response:

As trustworthy a source as socialvideoplaza.com clearly is...

Google has a different take:

YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785?hl=en

Mozilla also disagrees, here's a link to their study and some below articles diving into it

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/

https://www.androidauthority.com/study-youtube-dislike-button-bad-recommendations-3210676/

A Mozilla study found that YouTube’s “dislike” button was ineffective against bad recommendations.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2022/09/20/youtube-dislike-recommendations-mozilla/

...those buttons do little to purge unwanted videos from the personalized recommendations that YouTube feeds to users, according to a study published Tuesday by Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser.

For example, using the “Not Interested” button only prevented 11% of recommendations for similar videos, Mozilla said. The “Dislike” button only stopped 12%. The most effective control is the “Don’t recommend this channel” button, which works less than half of the time at 43%.

So..it looks like affirmatively engaging with a video, even with a dislike, is engagement and is unlikely to change what types of content YT feeds you.

Now, from my anecdotal experience, the only way to remove, or reduce, unwanted content categories from your YT feed is a combination of flagging them as not interested AND searching/watching a new category of content to replace it with. Not perfect, but manageable. Oh, and using Piped/proxied services e.g. Newpipe.

this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023

318 points (91.6% liked)

politics

19104 readers

2158 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News