The Left Has Failed Us!

I bet the libtards don't recognize the cogdis in this one either....

And some comedy...

Looks like the MSM has been wrong all along (cue my surprise) as the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) does not indoctrinate and radicalize... but rather deradicalizes...



Yes, yes, I know the only claim is that alt-right youtube video viewership has declined despite content and creators actually increasing...  specifically:



And of course the actual aim of this research paper was thus:  (spelling, spacing, and punctuation errors occured due to the weird way the font switched characters when copied, fixed all the ones I found)

These descriptive trends still allow for a large role of the recommendation system,and it is still very possible that far-right content may radicalize (at least some) of its viewership. However, the descriptive facts we bring to bear give us cause to question why these theories - which have not been quantitatively demonstrated - currently enjoy their status as dominant hypotheses.  Future empirical work is necessary to fully evaluate claims about the power of the recommendation algorithm. The scope of analyses of YouTube politics must be expanded; in particular, comparative analysis between the AIN and the small but growing collective of left-wing YouTubers (self-identified as "BreadTube") can help illuminate the role of YouTube as a platform in oppositional ideological communities. Another Empirical angle on YouTube is the way that it is inherently international; political video content has historically been country-specific, and the novel way that narratives and ideologies evolve when divorced from these specific contexts is not well understood. Theoretically, we encourage scholars to pay attention to the various novel affordances of YouTube, either independently or as a bundle, other than the recommendation engine. Although we have not done so here, we believe that applying the robust literature on parasocial relationships to the current context will prove particularly fruitful.A broader approach is important for the standard practice of political communication scholarship, but we also encourage more refl
exivity: we do not have the luxury of an objective vantage point from which to study alternative media. These actors are keenly aware of our work and use discrepancies between our analyses and their lived experience as evidence for the superiority of their interpretive communities; the success of these communities may be due to their audience's disenchantment with mainstream knowledge production as much as it is with that audience's appreciation for the quality of their alternative analysis.

There is no easy solution here, but a necessary first step is to recognize the scope of the challenge. YouTube politics and alternative media are here to stay; no algorithmic tweak will put the rest of the YouTube's powerful affordances back in the box. We urge scholars of political communication to use the descriptive information presented here as a jumping off point for more empirical and theoretical analysis of YouTube politics.

Well, when they bring it upon themselves...