It might mean the creation of private communities in which toxic ideologies are allowed to foment, unchecked. On YouTube, the same incentives have created cottage industries of shock jocks and livestreaming communities dedicated to bigotry cloaked in amateur philosophy. The YouTube personalities and the communities that spring up around the videos become important recruiting tools for the far-right fringes. It’ll involve big questions about the morality of the business models that turned these start-ups into money-printing behemoths. And even tougher questions about whether connectivity at scale is a universal good or an untenable phenomenon that’s slowly pushing us toward disturbing outcomes.

Source: New York Times March 19, 2019 12:15 UTC