[kwlug-disc] Apparently YouTube loves Canadian Youtubers

[Paul Nijjar]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 08:52:56PM -0500, Chris Craig wrote:
> >
> > I too haven't followed closely, but my impression is that it's trying to
> > be "Can Con" (Canadian Content for radio (& TV?)) for the internet.
> >
> >
> > Can Con has been pretty successful in promoting Canadian musicians as
> > far as I can tell, but the gist I get from C-11 is that it's either
> > misdirected, misguided, too great an imposition on the tech companies,
> > or maybe doomed because ... reasons, or maybe against our freedoms.
> >
> 

> The gist from Google/YouTube's standpoint is that in order to apply
> Can Con rules for Canadian users of Youtube, they would have to
> promote Canadian content in their recommendation system. They are
> saying that by doing this, Canadian users are less likely to receive
> the results they really want and react by downvoting videos that
> they otherwise wouldn't even have seen.  Then because those videos
> received downvotes, they would be less likely to be recommended for
> the global community.

That is a pretty weak argument from Google/Youtube. Youtube (and the
other social media platforms) are winner-take-all systems. Assuming
Google/Youtube actually take their recommendation systems seriously,
there is plenty of content created by Canadian creators, for
whatever definition of "Canadian" the government mandates. Canada
would just have a different set of winners than everywhere else.

What does "really want" mean? If I "really want" a specific youtuber
then I should still get that one and not a Canadian imitation. As long
as Google/Youtube search work so that I can find a youtuber/video I
actually want when I search for it(*) then I don't think I believe
recommending good/viral CanCon would be that onerous. The platforms
are constantly tweaking their algorithms as-is.

(*) This is a false premise. Youtube search kind of sucks already.

- Paul