Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-10502460-20180709044901

Algorithms. They determine the fate of content on the Web. Algorithms decide which content gets exposure and which is sealed up in obscurity. This is notoriously the case on Youtube.

It is not uncommon for a years-old Youtube video that had previously been unknown to get a sudden spike in views due to an algorithm adjustment. Often the most common comment is some variation of "why is this in my recommended?" A video from 2010 can go from having a few dozen views to tens of thousands in a matter of hours.

Perhaps you've heard the recent news story related to this phenomenon, though given that some kind of viral news seems to be breaking virtually around the clock now-a-days, there's as a good a chance you didn't. As someone who "was there", allow me to fill you in.

I was browsing Youtube after a long day of work, going down the usual rabbit hole of endless random recommended videos, and coming across a few old ones that had recently gone viral or semi-viral for algorithm-related reasons. I remember there being one of a pair of Mormon men and a family of JWs who ended up doing door-to-door mission work in the same subdivision at the same time and got into an argument on the sidewalk, and a video of a Goodyear Blimp caught in a thunderstorm.

Then I saw a video in my recommended feed titled "She Can't Hide", which was sitting at 20 thousand views. It was just going viral right then, and within hours the views would be in the hundreds of thousands; within a day, in the millions.

I clicked on it, and of course I saw the usual comments of "why is this recommended?", but the mood in the comments section overall was very different from when these things normally happened. The general consensus of the room rapidly went from "interesting fake video", to "at least I really hope it's fake" to "guys, I don't think this is fake. Should we tell someone about this?"

The video, "She Can't Hide", was from 2011, and had no description; nor did the uploading channel have any other videos. It was 23 seconds long and of poor quality, though understandably no one was in the mood to leave a "potato" comment.

The video started with the person holding the camera or phone running through a dark house. Some lamps in some rooms must have been on, since there was enough light to make out furniture and rug patterns and it didn't seem to be coming from the device, but the dark combined with the poor video quality made it difficult to fully make out what was going on. Muffled cries from a woman, presumed to be the person holding the device, could be heard in the the distorted audio, and the woman was slamming doors behind her as she ran.

About halfway through the video turned completely black, until the woman activated the light on her device to reveal her face. It was only for a couple moments, but that face will haunt me for the rest of my life.

The woman's face was covered in tears and mucus, and was as pale as a cadaver. She seemed to choke on her breath a few times in rapid succession before opening her mouth slightly. Her raspy whisper could not be understood, but reading her lips it seemed clear she was saying something along the lines of "Help. He's going to..."

Before she could finish, there was the noise of something falling a few feet away. The woman dropped the device and it continued recording as another set of footsteps crashed past. Moments later, the video ended abruptly.

Multiple users contacted the police and FBI. Youtube removed the video after about a day, and any reuploads were quic kly removed as well. A few big Youtubers started talking about it, which got the attention of the national media, who ran some stories on it. The woman was never identified, and within weeks the story had been all but forgotten, superseded by some other Youtube scandal involving a Youtuber who killed his cat for views or something. Since then, I have heard that Google is attempting to develop new ways to identify and investigate old videos that may have illegal content or content that would be valuable to police investigations. 