Don't recommend "alt right" content in "Discover" #4355
Comments
0x4c47
changed the title
|
Just came up with an idea about a general alternative: Suggest some assorted tech podcasts in the "Discover" section that is immediately visible. Podcasts about open source software, technologies used by AntennaPod or more high level technology stuff. |
|
I think it shows top podcasts based on your region from itunes. I don't see the shapiro podcast on my list. So maybe an itunes issue? |
Antennapod has no control over what is shown in the discover tab because that comes from the search engines it supports. This issue tracker is is for bug reports, not for your political views or your attempts to censor what other people can see on podcast search engines. |
|
Ben Shapiro isn't alt-right. |
Not on region but on language then. Other podcasts would be the relevant ones for my region. But my language is set to English so that should be the reason. If the recommendations come from iTunes tue project is still responsible for using those.
Of course the app is responsible for using these recommendations even if it currently isn't responsible for selecting them.
...and feature requests.
They can search for whatever they want. Podcasts are a distributed architecture. This is about what content this app is actively recommending to users. And there's always a decision based on political views. The only question is where I, you or we as a community draw the line.
He is. The vast majority of his presented views is "alt-right". The only thing where he differs from other alt-right figures is anti-semitism. |
This is an open client for an open community and as such it should not "draw the line" anywhere. This isn't a Facebook or other corporate project. Antennapod doesn't even maintain the directories it connects to so this whole "feature request" is silly. |
How exactly? Got any examples? |
If there's no line at all and you'd accept actively recommending every content out there to people whatsoever, that's fine. But I still want a project decision on that and want to decide for myself if I want to have anything to do with the project then in the future.
This is not the right place to discuss this in detail. Look it up for yourself. The case is pretty clear. And even if you wouldn't categorize him as "alt-right" specifically, he still promotes many right wing beliefs. |
You make the claim, you provide the evidence. I don't think you liked it when you got accused of beating your girlfriend last year and the accuser provided little evidence.
What is wrong with that? I will not condemn somebody because of their left-wing beliefs, and I will not condemn somebody because of their right-wing beliefs. I will also not condemn centrists on their beliefs. |
This would be true if I state something that isn't well known and broadly talked about out there in the open. Again: This is not the right place to discuss this in detail.
If you don't condemn i.e. racism and ideologies that support racism, that's sad, your thing and not important for this project in general. I want a decision by this community on this whole topic instead of just ignoring it. |
Not only is it not well-known, but your claim is false.
Fine, fine. I 100% condemn all of the racist actions that the left is committing, as well as the center and the right. Happy? |
It isn't up to this community. It is up to the directories that Antennapod connects to. Go complain to them instead of a small group of volunteers that just wants to give the community a functional, open client. |
|
As some of you already write, the recommendations are loaded from iTunes. These are the most popular podcasts in your region. My tests have shown that having recommendations is a huge usability improvement for average users. Recommendations have always been there but they got more prominent in 1.7.3 when I reworked the "add podcast" screen. All of the "AntennaPod is crap because I can't find new podcasts" ratings on Google Play suddenly stopped after making the recommendations more prominent. I therefore want to keep recommending podcasts or even enhance the discovery feature (see #3788). A pretty similar discussion took place on the F-Droid forum recently. The author there was not happy about the fact that F-Droid displays bible apps in the "recent updates" list because the bible promotes anti-LGBTIQ content. I have only skimmed the discussion but a consensus there seems to be that F-Droid should provide an option to hide specific apps from your view permanently. This would only apply to the local device. In the past, we got a few complaints by users who claimed that we censor things (when in reality, their feeds were just broken). I was always able to reply that AntennaPod is neutral and does not censor anything. To be honest, being neutral seems to be a pretty important value to me, even if it sometimes conflicts with one's beliefs. I have access to the AntennaPod Twitter account and I usually like most tweets that mention AntennaPod. One recent example where I did not do that was a podcast that was removed from iTunes for political reasons. The publishers wrote that one can still listen to the podcast by pasting the URL into AntennaPod. I think we have to make a differentiation between manual actions (retweets, podcasts displayed on screenshots, etc) and automatic actions "display the top 10 podcasts". I think that it is hard to argue that AntennaPod is open and neutral when showing the top 10 podcasts except X.
Starting with AntennaPod 1.8.1, the podcasts are loaded depending on the region (
We are looking for other directories to make AntennaPod more independent from iTunes but we have not yet found any (see #4041). If they have a similar feature that is based on popularity instead of manual picks, they will sometimes end up displaying unwanted content, too.
Most AntennaPod users are not tech-savvy. Such recommendations are pretty useless to them. Additionally, maintaining an up-to-date list of localized recommendations manually is impossible for AntennaPod (we struggle enough maintaining the general app with only a few contributors). If you want to see the difference between relevant recommendations and irrelevant ones, just compare the iTunes recommendations with the ones by gpodder (Add podcast » browse gpodder). |
|
Thank you for the statement. That's enough for me to know. |
|
@0x4c47 I would love to hear what you think about my statement. Even though I am currently doing most work on AntennaPod, I am not the only contributor. Especially in discussions like this (political instead of technical), I do not think that my opinion should weight more than the opinions of others. In Germany, most of the recommended podcasts are published by public service broadcasters. While using the app, I am not confronted with strong political opinions. Also, I do not know the podcast that you are talking about. You do not have to just accept my opinion like this - we are looking at different content. :) |
|
This issue has been mentioned on AntennaPod Forum. There might be relevant details there: https://forum.antennapod.org/t/should-we-filter-alt-right-content-recommendations-in-discover/150/1 |
|
Hi all, It's a very sensitive topic, and an important one, too. Technology isn't neutral, and claiming that our technology (the app) is, is outright pretentious. Plus there's a thing, I would argue, like editorial responsibility. Just like iTunes has a responsibility over their database and what is presented in the top 10, we (as a community) have a responsibility over which databases we query and how we treat their input. @0x4c47 @Pentaphon @TundraFizz I warmly invite you all to join here for a civilised exchange of arguments: Let's continue this discussion there :) Best, |
|
I've said all I need to say. It's not the dev's job to censor content. Open means open, period. The most that should happen is that the user should be able to disable connecting to any directory they don't like. |
|
See the work in progress on how you can hide the content you don't want #4515 |
|
@ByteHamster is this fixed by #4515? |
|
This issue got derailed by the side discussion about Ben Shapiro. If someone is not interested in a podcast, it would be nice to add it to a blocklist so that it never appears again in discover or search. Hide is an improvement, but it then leaves a mostly empty space in its place. |
Checklist
System info
App version: 1.8.3 from F-Droid
Feature description
Problem you may be having, or feature you want:
Don't recommend "alt right" podcasts (i.e. Ben Shapiro's podcast) in the "Discover" section each time a user wants to add a new podcast.
Suggested solution:
Exclude such podcasts in this view, disable the previews there all together or use another method of previewing content there.
Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details:
I know very much that this might (sadly) be a controversial one for some people. I wanted to open it anyways because I can't just accept this without speaking up about it.
I'm using this app for over a year now and the Ben Shapiro podcast was always recommended there.
I know that this app is just the framework to listen to podcasts and that you're not responsible for the content.
But there's still a responsibility in what you recommend to every single person that uses this app. And this recommendation of "alt right" content is promoting and normalizing these ideas of racism, hatred against queer folks, poor people etc. It's normalizing these regressive ideas of inequality.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: