YouTube paid a creator to film his daughters
New York Times profile: a lawncare YouTuber's videos spiraled into unhinged content featuring his daughters, racking up 600 million views. The twist? YouTube staff were actively behind the scenes, egging him on with algorithm data about what child viewers were clicking on when unsupervised.
YouTube knew exactly what it was optimizing for. The platform profited. His daughters paid the cost.
Source
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