Recommendation Algorithms Are a Necessary Evil (Sort Of)

Megan was brought into the embrace of the good lord Jesus Christ through the power of YouTube. She started with mommy bloggers who had, as she described it, a “really positive energy.” From there, she noticed that they frequented the same Targets and drank Diet Coke from the same drive-throughs and had the same bleached blonde hair and went to the same church—i.e., they were all from Utah. 

Her investigation into their personal lives surfaced a video series entitled “I’m a Mormon.” She dove into the deep end of the baptismal font (metaphorically speaking), watching dozens of hours of sermons on YouTube. Eventually, she requested a Book of Mormon to be dropped off at her house. I would know, I was the zitty 20-year-old missionary YouTube put on her doorstep to deliver it. Shortly thereafter, she got dunked in a baptismal font (not metaphorically speaking) and joined the LDS Church. On that day, she reported feeling “hopeful and free for the first time in a long time.” 

Jake escaped the grips of the same organization through YouTube. He had recently returned home from a mission to a far-off country and was watching the same “I’m a Mormon” videos. The system then recommended a new series: “I’m an Ex-Mormon.” Jake was sucked in—dozens of hours of videos were consumed. From there, Google directed him to various blogs where people questioned the tenets of the faith he had just spent two years preaching. After several years of questioning and doubting, he left the LDS church. I should know, Jake is my friend. When I asked him how he felt after leaving, he reported, “Hopeful and free for the first time in a long time.” Note: Both names have been changed to protect privacy. 

You may or may not like religion, but that is irrelevant. What matters is this: Did the AI recommendation do good? The emotional outcome was identical for the individuals. To the best of my knowledge, neither person regrets the choice they made. And, still, neither person would’ve made the change they did without YouTube’s recommendation engine surfacing just the right video at just the right time. 

The challenge is that “good” is stakeholder dependent. If you’re a devout Mormon, Jake’s choice was bad, potentially dooming his soul. If you’re a committed atheist, Megan was a fool, suckered into a cult. In either case, YouTube finds both outcomes good because the two consumed dozens of hours of ad-supported videos before making this decision. Other stakeholders—like society at large, content producers, governments, or advertisers—may have different perspectives on the relative good of YouTube’s AI-powered conversions. 

To further muddy the waters, how much good is even attributable to YouTube is debatable. Ask yourself: What percentage of these two individuals' actions can be credited to the information they received versus their own free will? To what degree do you believe in individual agency?

This isn’t some mere philosophical debate. Over one billion hours of video are consumed by YouTube’s users every day. Over 70% of the videos consumed are surfaced by algorithmic feeds. It is the second most visited website in the world. And the beating heart of its success is a recommendation engine. 

Recommendation engines, sometimes called recommendation algorithms, have been blamed for Trump’s election, Biden’s election, mass shootings, the proliferation of vegan restaurants, and TikTok’s dominance. The tech is responsible for you reading this very article. Whether Gmail put this in your “main” inbox, spam, or social tab, the destination was determined by some type of recommendation engine. They permeate e-commerce sites and travel websites. Anywhere there is more information than the eye can scan, algorithms are at work surfacing results.