End Time Signs

wired wrote:Scammers and political operatives will deploy machine learning algorithms to generate untold volumes of misinformation and, because social networks selectively transmit the most attention-grabbing content, these systems’ output will evolve to be maximally likeable, clickable, and shareable.

Guys who make gibberish kids videos for youtube wrote:
Basically, it comes down to automation. Whether it’s pregnant Elsa videos or the rambling word salads, these clips and their titles are constructed to exploit YouTube’s computerized curation. They contain words and phrases that parents might search for or would trigger YouTube’s recommended videos feature, sliding them in alongside innocuous nursery rhymes and legitimate videos from popular kids shows.

The same characters and keywords pop up over and over again—“Spider-Man,” “bad baby,” “finger family,” “education,” “tantrum,” “colors,” “superheroes,” “rhymes,” “Peppa Pig”—and they’re almost always jumbled together into some incomprehensible sentence that must look absolutely scrumptious to a YouTube algorithm. It’s all so finely tuned that it’s impossible to tell where the human element of these operations begins and ends, or if there is one at all. As Bridle writes, “This is content production in the age of algorithmic discovery — even if you’re a human, you have to end up impersonating the machine.”

"In terms of contact and relationship with YouTube, honestly, the algorithm is the thing we had a relationship with since the beginning. That's what got us out there and popular. We learned to fuel it and do whatever it took to please the algorithm.”