Paul GrahamVerified account

But it is very, very probable that one can identify two demographically similar 37 year old US-based men, one who has seen five minutes of one Youtube video and one who watches 12+ hours a day, and Google optimizes monomaniacally in whatever it takes to bring #2 back tomorrow.

I'll note that Youtube is recruiting armies upon armies of people who are essentially paid to perform anthropological research and community management of hingefluencers, which is a dynamic that talk about The Algorithm often misses.

Google search was a symbiosis between the borg and SEOs who it incentivized to solve their ML and product problems by filling in the gaps in the Internet and making them maximally discoverable by whatever technology Google had. Youtube similarly uses/employs/etc Youtubers.

Sometimes this is great. Youtube cuts materially sized checks, daily, to a creative middle class the world over, including funding some extremely quality programming. The consumer surplus for e.g. parents is pretty incredible, if you carefully curate what your kids watch.

Sometimes, it is less great. Google very obviously pays some people who have great challenges in life to bind together a community of other people who have great challenges in life, and it is not obvious that the binding is net-positive to any member of that community.

"Give me an example." Examples are plentiful. I'd prefer to leave it ambiguous because I do not like piling onto people who have great challenges in life already, and because being seen as pronouncing a moral judgment is one of the ways to stir the ravening hosts on Twitter.

I know all about the ravening hosts of Twitter, but is it possible to be a little more specific? I can't tell what you're talking about.

Consider any severe problem people are likely to have or perceive themselves as having. Videos about that problem have high product-market fit on Youtube. If the problem is chronic in nature and not amenable to solution via video, the user may now have more problems.