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Frame from Stanford Seminar - Unethical Algorithms of Massive Scale Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Stanford Seminar - Unethical Algorithms of Massive Scale

10 videos recommended on HN
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2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2017–2022 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited in threads about search bias, election influence and big-tech data practices as the most comprehensive video of Epstein's research.

Psychologist Robert Epstein presents a Stanford EE380 colloquium on how internet algorithms such as search rankings can manipulate opinions, purchases and votes at massive scale. He also describes a new monitoring system for tracking such influence.

“It's worth watching even if it's 1 hour and 23 minutes.” (HN, 2017)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Talks · partly dated

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@robbedpeter Feb 2022 Recommends
on HN thread TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
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>>The 2020 presidential election monitoring project successfully recruited a diverse group of 732 registered voters in three battleground states: Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. It preserved more than 500,000 ephemeral experiences on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and Facebook. These are the fleeting experiences that Big Tech companies use to influence votes and opinions worldwide and that are normally lost forever. >>A preliminary analysis of the data shows that Google search results (but NOT search results on Bing or Yahoo) had a significant liberal bias – enough to have shifted at least 6 million votes in the months leading up to the election. You need to know the methodology being used to understand the results, as they tracked ephemeral experiences using surveillance software with volunteers. This guy needs a website team in the biggest way. It's hard to find the information and it's scattershot. It's very frustrating because the work he's doing is solid. Don't let the shitty web presence deter you. The Rogan podcast was awkward af but he does provide a lot of substantive content if you're open to listening. [link] is probably the most coherent site, but there's no salient tldr breakdown, to learn more you'll need to watch the videos. [this video] is the most comprehensive video, but I'll need to spend more time later to gather better links.
Most comprehensive video on Epstein's election monitoring research

Citations, criticism and jokes

@drallison Dec 2017 Cites it
on HN thread The search engine manipulation effect and its possible impact on elections [pdf]
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Robert Epstein has given a couple of talks on the search engine effect at Stanford which have been published to YouTube. Stanford Seminar - Unethical Algorithms of Massive Scale - YouTube Video for epstein youtube stanford ▶ 1:23:56 [this video] Jun 8, 2017 - Uploaded by stanfordonline EE380: Computer Systems Colloquium Seminar Unethical Algorithms of Massive Scale: New Data, a New ... Stanford Seminar - The Search Engine Manipulation Effect ... - YouTube Video for epstein youtube stanford search engine ▶ 1:14:04 [link] Oct 29, 2015 - Uploaded by stanfordonline "The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and Its Unparalleled Power To Influence How We Think ...
Epstein's Stanford talk on search engine effects

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