A new study has found that there’s something definitely off about YouTube’s video recommendation algorithm, and left-leaning videos get recommended far less than videos from right-leaning creators. Plus, Democrats are warning their base that the polls could be wildly off base and that Donald Trump could over perform the polls like he did in 2016 and 2020. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A new study’s found that there’s something definitely off about YouTube’s recommendation algorithms and left-leaning videos are recommended far less than video creators on the right. Wow. We see this, don’t we, constantly? I don’t know that you could call my stuff left-leaning. Most of the stuff I do is it’s consumer generated. It’s certainly the middle of the road where it comes to politics. I’m not Democrat or Republican, either one. But we see throttle back on political. I see your stuff throttled back all the time. Every day, we’re a family here. Ring of Fire’s very much a family and we all know what everybody’s doing, and we want everybody to have an opinion. And your opinions are absolutely throttled back when you start going far after Trump or after Republicans. If it doesn’t look conservative, they’re throttled back. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And there is a new study that seems to confirm this. It’s this study out of London, we hear the US we don’t do meaningful things. But what they did was they looked at this and they created these different online personas to test and see what YouTube would recommend. They had one that was a mommy vlogger. So we’re interested in stuff for moms and parents. We have one that is a staunch conservative, one that’s a staunch liberal, one that is a Spanish speaking mother. And what they found across the board was that if you’re right-leaning, they’re gonna recommend right-leaning material to you, as they should. That’s what you like. But if you’re left-leaning, you’re actually not getting recommended more left-leaning content. They will throw right-wing content at you. They will throw culture war issue at you. And most importantly, the main thing they’re pushing is religious content. So, whereas the right-wing people will get recommendations for Fox News, the left-wing people are not getting recommended left-wing content.
Mike Papantonio: Do you know what’s scary about it? They say that algorithms are driven by the pulse of the nation. You ever heard the term?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Pulse of the nation. We are figuring out, we have AI looking at everything. They’re analyzing polls. They’re analyzing what’s being said out there in social media and we’re reacting to the pulse of the nation. And what that tells you is what the pulse of the nation is a movement to the right. I mean, that’s the only thing you can conclude from this. And these are folks that they’re hanging their hat on the idea that we’re calling it right because I think what you’re saying is completely correct. We see it here firsthand. We see the throttle back when you do something.
Farron Cousins: We can see our views from recommended videos start to dwindle.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely.
Farron Cousins: Because it happens about once a year, once every two years. And it’s something that, by the way, just I guess anecdotally here, but it has happened in the last month to essentially every left-leaning channel. MeidasTouch, TYT, Brian Tyler Cohen, Majority Report, David Pakman,
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They’re doing stories on it. They’re saying this is bad.
Farron Cousins: Right. And us, and so it does happen across the board. But when you look at the right-leaning channels, there’s no drop in traffic. There’s no drop in advertising. They always seem to be unaffected when the left goes through these doldrums, which shouldn’t be happening in an election year when people are actually seeking out political news. But it does happen for some reason.
Mike Papantonio: Well, if you believe that algorithms are driven by this thing called pulse of the nation, it gives you a sense of what we might be concerned about. Right.
Democrats are warning their base to temper their expectations for November, even as Harris maintains a national polling lead, these Democrats are afraid that the polls could be wildly off base and Donald Trump could outperform in the polls like he did in 2016, like he did in 2020, substantially. It wasn’t just a slight out outperformance, it was a big outperformance. Talk about it. If I talk about it, it’s gonna be Pap attacking the Democrats again.
Farron Cousins: You know, you gotta start with reminding people in 2016, Hillary Clinton was the favorite to win. The polls had her up by what, five points I think and then she ended up winning the popular vote by about three and a half percent.
Mike Papantonio: 3 million plus votes.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, exactly. And so the polls were technically right, just not accurate, if that makes sense to people. Then in 2020, believe it or not, the polls were even worse off. They said Biden had what, a seven point advantage?
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And then he won by I think
Mike Papantonio: 5.2 or something, or less than that, 2.5 maybe.
Farron Cousins: It was 2.1.
Mike Papantonio: 2.1. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: 2.1. So, it really was bad. It was really awful. And what happened is, as we’ve talked about multiple times here, we’re getting oversampling. We’re getting oversampling from California, from New York, from very populous states and I’m not trying to pick two blue states.
Mike Papantonio: But they are. They’ve proven that’s their going, those are the going to points. That’s what they did with Hillary. Okay. And they missed all the flyover states and the flyover states came out in droves.
Farron Cousins: And she personally campaigning, missed all the flyover states too.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: And she was ahead, what was it? Seven points in Wisconsin.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, one time it was nine points, Farron, she was ahead.
Farron Cousins: And then lost by seven because the polls were so off in Wisconsin. And sure, the polls right now say, oh, Harris has got a pretty good lead in Wisconsin, but none of it could be real. And that’s what we also, this could be as real as Bitcoin.
Mike Papantonio: Isn’t the swing state problem, the swing state problem is, the difference is a hair. It’s 0.3, 0.4. And there’s a mechanism that the pollsters use. Of course I have zero trust in the polls. I mean, my thing is go vote. If you want to be entertained, if you want to make yourself angry, if you want to make yourself happy, read the polls that make you happy. If you just want to be depressed, read the polls that make you sad. I don’t give a. But at the end of the day, go vote. I mean, that’s it. Right? That’s where it really takes place. But when you look at these pollsters, they say, when you see this thin margin in swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, when you see this close, close, 0.3, 0.4, that is exactly how Hillary lost. Okay. They were calling, in the Hillary case they were, in the Hillary situation, they kept saying, well, when we look at the numbers, she has what was a 57% chance of winning, 55% chance.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Same thing here. You call Harris, if you look at these, she has a 54% chance of winning. It’s a flipping of the coin. Flip a coin and you’re gonna see what they’re saying about these polls. And to me, you know, like I say, I love to watch, I love to listen to people’s reaction though. In a weird kinda way, I like to see people just go off crazy, you know, I can’t believe the poll says this. They go insane. I don’t know, maybe some people are entertained by that. I don’t know. But to me it is the biggest problem they’re having now is what they call built-in ideological favoritism, both sides. And so that’s something I look at. You just ignore the polls. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, and I think a lot of what we saw in 2016 and 2020 as well has to do with kind of what they called the embarrassed voters. The people who were gonna vote for Trump but didn’t want to admit it when talking to the pollster. That is actually a thing.
Mike Papantonio: I know, I saw it. Can you imagine being so embarrassed by saying, yeah, I’m.
Farron Cousins: And it’s somebody you’re talking to on the phone, you’re never gonna meet ’em in person. They don’t know you.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like they’re not in the room with you and they go, hey, you know, Joe said he is gonna. But that was a real thing, wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Is it a real thing now?
Farron Cousins: I think probably more so today. So, I always tell people when I do talk about the polls, I say, look, I’m not here to give anybody false hope, so take it with a grain of salt what I’m about to tell you.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: And hopefully it sticks with people. I do talk about polls because we’re in an election cycle. Polls are there. But it’s the issue polls when you have people that say, yes, this is an important issue to me, this is not, those matter.
Mike Papantonio: If people listen to you, when you talk about polls, you always say, at the end of the day, go out and vote. The polls don’t mean anything. I mean, full disclosure, sometimes we do these polling stories just to people off that are watching this show. Truthfully, I love to say, but it does, it makes ’em crazy. And the truth of the matter is, go vote. Don’t worry about the polls. Turn off the polls. Turn off MSNBC and CNN and Fox News or whatever. Go vote.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because none of this is real until everything is real.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. Farron Cousins, the best, I swear you are absolutely the best progressive commentator in the business, and I’m so glad you’re on this show with me all the time.
Farron Cousins:: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks a lot. That’s all the time we have. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you subscribe. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em. They actually prevent ’em from telling these stories because they’ll dry up their advertising dollars or they become too Republican or too Democrat and a news organization can’t tell you the truth. They want to tell you what’s gonna make you happy to hear. We don’t have that problem. A lot of times we tell you stuff that’s not gonna make you happy, but that’s what we’re about. We’ll see you next time.