archived recording 1 Take the spin, now you’re in with the techno set. You’re going surfing on the internet. archived recording 2 It’s another day in the life of the Jamesons, maybe a family a little bit like yours. Except it’s not really just another day. Today’s the day I’m taking my family surfing around the world on the internet. archived recording 3 It’s cool. Dad’s finally installed the internet on our home computer. Now I can surf the net any time I want.

[music]

andy mills Test, test, test. Is this the state line? kevin roose I just saw the West Virginia Welcome Center. andy mills Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia with Jim Justice. kevin roose Oh, the governor’s name is Jim Justice. I feel like the campaign signs, like, make themselves. andy mills Vote Justice. keving roose You know?

andy mills

OK, so, just like, tell me the story and I’ll poke you on the way.

kevin roose

OK.

kevin roose This is our exit here.

kevin roose

So last year, you and I hopped in a car —

andy mills Can you just — can you just tell me, like, what are you up to today and what are you hoping to find out?

kevin roose

— to meet this guy.

kevin roose His story is really interesting. So he says that he was radicalized through YouTube videos and spent, you know, several years becoming progressively more extreme in his politics.

kevin roose

After this shooting in New Zealand last March, there was a lot of talk about online radicalization. The shooter was a white nationalist who clearly spent a lot of time in far right internet communities.

kevin roose I’ve been looking for a good case study of how it happens to just one person, what that path looks like.

kevin roose

And I kept hearing over and over again from sources I was talking to in this world, like, you have to look at YouTube.

kevin roose There are elements of it that seem very familiar to me and some that don’t seem so familiar. So we’re going to have him walk us through it. We missed our turn. I was so excited about this that I missed my turn.

kevin roose

So we drove down to West Virginia, where he lives.

kevin roose Hey, how’s it going? All right, great.

kevin roose

He’s standing right there. He’s on his headphones. Big smile.

caleb cain Nice to meet you guys. andy mills Hi, Andy. kevin roose This is Andy. andy mills I’m going to stick a microphone around you. caleb cain That’s fine.

kevin roose

He’s got a Gorillaz t-shirt on. He says hi and brings us into his friend’s house.

kevin roose Hi, I’m Kevin. Nice to meet you. caleb's friend Nice to meet you. kevin roose Thank you for letting us crash your — caleb's friend Oh yeah. kevin roose — your house here.

kevin roose

And the first thing he does is —

caleb cain Now I’m gonna just sit this over here. andy mills Can you describe what it is that you’re setting down? caleb cain A Glock-43.

kevin roose

— pull out his gun.

kevin roose Is that the first time you’ve had a gun? caleb cain I’ve liked firearms my whole life. I’m not against firearms. But, yeah, that’s — I’ve always been like, well, I don’t really need one. But then the day after I got death threats, went out and bought one. kevin roose Oh, man. caleb cain I’ll probably never have to use it. These guys usually just like send SWAT teams to your house and [EXPLETIVE] like that. But, you know, it’s just to be safe. kevin roose Well, where should we sit? Where’s the best place for us to — caleb's friend You can sit here.

kevin roose

Eventually we go over, we sit on the couch.

andy mills Give me a little test here. kevin roose Oh, sure. Testing, one, two, three. Do-re-mi.

kevin roose

And he starts telling what begins like a pretty relatable and familiar story.

kevin roose So can you just start, like, tell us your name and how old you are? caleb cain Yeah. My name’s Caleb Cain. I’m 26 years old. I was born in Florida but I grew up here in West Virginia. kevin roose When did you move to West Virginia? caleb cain My mother had me with some man that I never met. And then she, like, immediately left Florida, I guess. I don’t know all the details there.

kevin roose

He had kind of a rough childhood, as he describes it.

caleb cain Got raised by my grandparents.

kevin roose

Didn’t really have a lot of friends.

kevin roose What were you like as a kid? caleb cain Um, really shy and nerdy, picked on on the bus.

kevin roose

Didn’t really feel like he fit in.

caleb cain Going to high school was hell. I hated it. I saw everybody as conformists.

kevin roose

Like a lot of teenagers, he got really into video games.

caleb cain So Zelda was a big one, Donkey Kong.

kevin roose

And then he discovered —

caleb cain Freshman year of high school was whenever I got high speed internet.

kevin roose

— the internet. I don’t know what I would have done without the internet.

archived recording (video gamer) This thing is awesome! [LAUGHING] caleb cain It was like a escape.

kevin roose

And the internet is a revolution for him, because finally —

caleb cain That’s when I started playing a lot of online video games. archived recording (video gamer 1) Oh [EXPLETIVE], in the window of the house! archived recording (video gamer 2) Oh, I’m reloading.

kevin roose

He finds people who are like him.

caleb cain People over the country, all over the world. archived recording (video gamer 1) Oh, that was so good, man. archived recording (video gamer 2) Oh, nice. [LAUGHTER] caleb cain I met a lot of friends. archived recording (video gamer) They grow up so quickly. [LAUGHTER]

kevin roose

And he develops this new routine where, like, every day he comes home from school, gets on his computer —

archived recording (video gamer) All right, this is Call of Duty 2.

kevin roose

— plays a bunch of video games. And then, later at night —

caleb cain I’d turn on YouTube.

kevin roose

— he goes on YouTube.

archived recording (youtube clip 1) (SINGING) Chocolate rain. archived recording (youtube clip 2) I’m on crack.

kevin roose

And YouTube at the time, it was —

archived recording (youtube clip 3) Is this supposed to be forever?

kevin roose

— mostly —

archived recording (youtube clip 4) Charlie! That really hurt.

kevin roose

— viral videos and comedy sketches. This was like, you know, early, early YouTube.

archived recording (youtube clip 1) I want my money! archived recording (youtube clip 2) You need to relax. caleb cain Stay up all night and watch, like — archived recording (youtube clip) (SINGING) It’s my dick in a box, dick in a box, girl. caleb cain — and bust up laughing.

kevin roose

If Caleb didn’t feel like he fit in in high school, in his sort of physical surroundings —

archived recording (youtube clip 1) And the categories are Potent Potables. archived recording (youtube clip 2) You wouldn’t know it, but I like people.

kevin roose

YouTube was the place that he felt most at home.

archived recording (youtube clip) I like people, but I like them in short bursts. kevin roose You’re speaking to me very deeply. caleb cain Yeah, exactly. kevin roose I experienced this too. Like, I was not cool in high school. And I remember the internet kind of being a place that you would go to, like, escape. caleb cain Yeah. kevin roose And it was sort of nicer than your real life, in some cases. caleb cain You’re right. It was nicer back then. kevin roose Were you political at the time? caleb cain Political in like a very surface level sense, right? Like anti-authority and like, you know. Most of my politics as a teenager came from, like, Dead Kennedys, and — archived recording (dead kennedys) (SINGING) California! Uber Alles! archived recording (michael moore) This is Michael Moore. I am here to make a citizen’s arrest. caleb cain — Michael Moore documentaries. And that influenced me a lot. archived recording (michael moore) I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what’s going on in this country. caleb cain So there was very much that punk rock influence inside of me.

kevin roose

He also got really into these new atheist videos.

archived recording (cristopher hitchens) When I say that I think religion poisons everything — caleb cain I remember watching, like, Christopher Hitchens on YouTube. archived recording (cristopher hitchens) I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity. caleb cain You’d get old uploads — archived recording (richard dawkins) For me, what matters is the truth. caleb cain — of like a Richard Dawkins speech. archived recording (richard dawkins) There is nothing special about the Bible.

andy mills

Oh, I remember these videos. They felt like, kind of scandalous at the time.

kevin roose

Right. They felt subversive. They felt like watching people say the uncomfortable thing.

archived recording (sam harris) If God is good and loving and just, and he wanted to guide us morally with a book, why give us a book that supports slavery.

kevin roose

By today’s standards, obviously, like, this is extremely tame. But at the time, like, this was pretty edgy stuff.

kevin roose So this would have been, like, early Obama years, right? caleb cain Yeah. Yeah, early Obama years. kevin roose Did you like Obama? Or What did you feel about him? caleb cain I liked him. I didn’t know much about him, because I didn’t look into actual politics. So I didn’t know what he was doing. But, yeah, I liked him. I thought, yeah, we have a black president. That’s cool. Like, you know, first black president. Making progress. andy mills What year was it that you graduated from school? caleb cain I graduated 2011, went to college.

kevin roose

And then he goes off to college. And college, like, just doesn’t really take for him.

caleb cain I wanted to go and do an environmental major. And I didn’t have a good time. Most the time I’d stay in my room. Even on nice days when people were out on the quad throwing frisbees, I’d sit in my room and play video games. And then there was also this embarrassing moment where I got into a fight with this kid on campus and kind of got laughed off of campus. And that night, I freaking left. Because I wasn’t going to class anyway. And I just withdrew from my classes and I left. And I came back to West Virginia.

kevin roose

So he moves back in with his grandparents. And there, like, he doesn’t have much to do. He doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t really have a direction.

caleb cain It’s just me in a room and a bed.

kevin roose

He spent a lot of time —

caleb cain Slept a lot.

kevin roose

— feeling depressed.

caleb cain I’d sit in my basement and just be, like, so freaking down.

kevin roose

At one point he even loses his gaming computer.

caleb cain My gaming computer got stolen, by the way, which really [EXPLETIVE] drove me up a wall. And so not I didn’t even have video games. Now I have a crappy little computer that can hardly run anything. But it can run YouTube. archived recording (youtube clip) Whoa, that’s a cool rainbow.

kevin roose

And so now he’s in his early 20s. He’s living at his grandparents’ house.

archived recording (youtube clip) It’s not so much that it’s bad. kevin roose And he feels like, at this time in his life, when he should be, like, finding his way, he should be starting a career and thinking about having a family — archived recording (youtube clip) So hide ya kids, hide ya wife.

kevin roose

Instead, he’s just watching YouTube.

archived recording (youtube clip 1) Look at that horse. archived recording (youtube clip 2) All we know is how little we know. archived recording (youtube clip 3) (SINGING) What does the fox say?

kevin roose

And then —

archived recording (athene) The human brain is a network of approximately 100 billion neurons. caleb cain I found a documentary called, “God is in the Neurons.” archived recording (athene) When we grow up, our moral and ethical compass is almost entirely forged by our environments. caleb cain It’s about like, cognitive dissonance, and like how you can fall into patterns of behavior. And since you have neuroplasticity, that you can get out of those patterns of behavior. archived recording (athene) When we are self-aware, we can alter misplaced emotions, because we control the thoughts that cause them. caleb cain So I got in this mindset of, oh, my brain is just like this tool that I can shape into whatever I want.

kevin roose

And then he stumbles into this emerging wing of YouTube.

caleb cain And so I started, just going through self-help content.

kevin roose

Self-help videos.

archived recording (self-help video 1) What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality? archived recording (tony robbins) All of our success and failure in life comes from little decisions. caleb cain Cheesy stuff, to be honest with you. archived recording (tony robbins) The process of conditioning ourselves actually feels incredible. caleb cain Like Tony Robbins and stuff. archived recording (self-help video) Every mind possesses the potential to be utterly free of all — caleb cain And Zen Buddhism stuff. archived recording (alan watts) We want to change our consciousness.

kevin roose

They’re like, people with advice specifically for —

archived recording (self-help video) You continue to do those same behaviors that keep you from making the change.

kevin roose

— guys like Caleb. And then —

archived recording (stefan molyneux) To be truly free is both very easy and very hard. caleb cain — I found Stef. archived recording (stefan molyneux) But we can only be kept in the cages we refuse to see.

kevin roose

So Stefan Molyneux is this Canadian libertarian, formerly a historian and an entrepreneur. And then he sort of became like a podcaster guy.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) Good morning, everybody. It’s Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. I hope that you’re doing very well. caleb cain Stef just was in the sidebar one day, and I clicked on it. archived recording (stefan molyneux) You really have to open the often iron-bound doors of your heart.

kevin roose

When YouTube, sort of early in its life, removed its 15-minute limit on how long videos could be, he just started pumping out hour, two-hour long shows called Freedomain Radio.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) The approach that we take at Freedomain Radio, the sort of philosophical Socratic approach that we take, can be very, very helpful for you.

kevin roose

Where he would expound on philosophical ideas.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) Philosophy is the all-discipline. It covers everything. And that’s why, to me, it is the most exciting and fundamental —

kevin roose

And Stefan Molyneux is telling him things that, you know, make him feel better. He’s saying, this depression that you’re going through, it’s not permanent. Things will get better. And that a lot of the disillusionment and pain that young men like Caleb are facing is not actually their fault.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) From the perspective of a young man, just take a brief look at society —

kevin roose

It’s the fault of society.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) I mean, you get of course on-demand pornography. You get video games that are unbelievably realistic, absorbing and addictive. And what else do they have to look forward to? Well, they can get themselves involved in higher education and graduate an average of $25,000 in debt to a job market that is pretty stagnant or declining. You’ve seen real wages —

kevin roose

He finds a lot of what he’s saying pretty sensible.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) College students are damn right to be depressed. Their society is unsustainable, because nobody’s asking the fundamental questions about why the society is the way it is, why things are so bad. caleb cain I was like yeah, yeah, that’s true.

kevin roose

And he’s not just talking at people. He invites people to send him questions.

archived recording (stefan molyneux) I have had a number of requests to do a podcast on how to meet a nice girl, because there are a lot of —

kevin roose

He invites them into his life.

caleb cain He would talk about how he grew up. archived recording (stefan molyneux) I was interested in morality from a very early age. I was physically, emotionally and mentally abused. caleb cain And he’s talked about how he was so much better now. archived recording (stefan molyneux) I have consistently said, if you have problems with your parents, talk to a therapist. caleb cain And he had went to therapy and his life had improved. archived recording (stefan molyneux) Before we met, Christina had spent quite some time working on herself. caleb cain And he had a wife who would come on stream with him. archived recording (christina papadopoulus I had struggled with a previous relationship. kevin roose He has his wife on this channel and they talk about their life together. archived recording (stefan molyneux) I’m watching my daughter learn how to make jokes. Finding out what is funny for her, what is not funny for her and why. Like, I just — I want to kiss her hair all day. Just because, you know, I must kiss your brain. caleb cain He talks about how much he loves his daughter. It’s like, I want all that stuff. I want a family like that. Because that’s what I wanted my whole life. I just wanted a stable family. And I thought, well, if I just keep watching more and more, I’ll be like Stef. archived recording 1 (stefan molyneux) Hey, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. archived recording 2 (stefan molyneux) Hi, everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux. archived recording 3 (stefan molyneux) Hi, everybody, it’s Stefan Molyneux’s Freedomain Radio. I hope you’re doing very well.

kevin roose

And for Caleb —

archived recording (stefan molyneux) You got happiness without responsibility. kevin roose — Stefan Molyneux, his voice and his videos, become a source of stability for him. archived recording (stefan molyneux) There are very specific things that people need to do to be happy.

kevin roose

And Caleb says that all the stuff that he’s watching on YouTube, like, it’s actually helping.

caleb cain I started working at Dairy Queen.

kevin roose

He gets a new job.

caleb cain And then I started, like, getting over a lot of my social anxiety, because now I’m forced to interact with people and I’m also hanging out with all these high school kids.

kevin roose

He starts to feel like things are picking up for him, finally.

caleb cain And after that, I mean, it was just more and more of that. archived recording (stefan molyneux) So the problem is not that we don’t know how to archived recording (foster the people) [Intro to “Pumped up Kicks”] caleb cain I was pretty much always on YouTube. archived recording (lorde) (SINGING) Every song’s like gold teeth, Grey Goose, tripping in the bathroom.

kevin roose

He’s watching not only the self-help stuff from Stefan Molyneux.

archived recording (gyote) (SINGING) But you didn’t have to cut me off. archived recording (history channel documentary) The Great Pyramid at Giza.

kevin roose

He starts getting pretty into Joe Rogan —

archived recording Joe Rogan is the man.

kevin roose

— the biggest podcast, YouTube talk show guy that there is on the internet.

archived recording (joe rogan) Thank you very much for coming by, man. This is cool as [EXPLETIVE].

kevin roose

But back then, was just starting to experiment with uploading his interviews to YouTube.

archived recording (joe rogan) Anthony Bourdain is with us, ladies and gentlemen. archived recording (stefan molyneux) Hi everybody, it’s Stefan Molyneux.

kevin roose

He just keeps watching and watching —

archived recording You’re almost like an accidental —

kevin roose

— and watching.

archived recording (interposing youtube clip) Take ownership of what they have done in their life. caleb cain If I wasn’t at work, any single moment that I had, I was watching YouTube videos. archived recording (miley cyrus) (SINGING) We can’t stop, we won’t stop. archived recording (joe rogan) This is episode 500. archived recording Probably, it’s at that point, 10, 12, 13, 14 hours a day. archived recording (stefan molyneux) — judge individuals as bad people. caleb cain I sound like a crazy person, but that’s what I would do.

kevin roose

And when Caleb talks about watching YouTube videos during this period in his life, he talks about experiencing this as the sensation of falling. But the thing that he doesn’t even really know to think about is that on the other side of his screen there’s a force that’s pulling him in. And that force has to do with a French guy named Guillaume —

kevin roose Guillaume, hello. This is Kevin. guillaume chaslot Hey, how are you? kevin roose Doing well. How are you? guillaume chaslot Great.

kevin roose

— who, even though they’ve never met —

guillaume chaslot So, yeah, I think everything is ready here.

kevin roose

— is a really important part of Caleb’s story.

[music]

guillaume chaslot I did a PhD in artificial intelligence, and then I worked at Microsoft.

kevin roose

Guilllaume Chaslot is a pretty smart guy.

kevin roose You studied how to make robots, essentially. guillaume chaslot Exactly.

kevin roose

Got his doctorate, studying machine learning. And then in 2010 he got his dream job, working at Google.

guillaume chaslot And so when I joined Google, I actually didn’t know which project I would be put on.

kevin roose

And when he gets to Google, he gets this really interesting and exciting assignment.

guillaume chaslot Yeah, it turned out they needed someone on the AI of YouTube. So I was the perfect fit.

kevin roose

And the project he’s assigned to work on is ultimately what distinguishes YouTube from every other website on the internet. And that has to do with the recommendations sidebar, and the artificial intelligence that makes the whole thing work.

kevin roose And did this seem to you like a big deal, to be given a job at Google, working on YouTube recommendations? guillaume chaslot Yeah. That was really amazing at first to realize that my work was going to be affecting so many people. So I thought that was going to be a good thing. I thought, OK, we can make artificial intelligence to make the world a better place. kevin roose And when you got there, I assume there was some algorithm that was selecting videos for people. How did that algorithm work? guillaume chaslot Yeah. So initially, when YouTube started, what’s best was clicks. Like, the more people clicked on videos, the better they thought it was. And then they realized that it led to too many clickbaits. So people would click on the title, then realize that the video was not at all but what was said in the title. And then they would leave the platform immediately. So that would be actually bad for YouTube. So then they switched their measure to total watch time. kevin roose And how was the goal of this algorithm explained to you? Like, what did you understand about what YouTube’s executives wanted? guillaume chaslot The idea was to maximize watch time at all cost. To just make it grow as big as possible.

kevin roose

It seems like a simple shift, but that shift has radical consequences.

archived recording 1 YouTube’s watch time has gone up by 50 percent. archived recording 2 Seeing accelerating usage growth.

kevin roose

It produces these numbers that no one has ever seen before.

archived recording 1 YouTube now pulls in more than a billion dollars a quarter. archived recording 2 It’s just an incredible size of audience who are consuming ever more video content. archived recording 3 It’s not so much if you’re watching YouTube, it’s how much. kevin roose How are you feeling about your work at this point? guillaume chaslot I think we were so excited on working on this project that we didn’t really question too much that watch time was a good metric. We were thinking, yeah, I mean, if people are watching longer, they might be happier about what they’re watching. So at the time I felt pretty good about this. Yeah. caleb cain If I had a moment to stick earbuds in my ear — archived recording (interposing youtube clips) To reject how we are human by other — caleb cain Any single moment that I wasn’t talking to someone, I was consuming content. archived recording (joe rogan) Hey, everybody. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by — guillaume chaslot But then I realized there were some issues. People were noticing that you had a problem with maximizing just watch time that it creates this filter bubbles. kevin roose Say more about that. guillaume chaslot The way I explained it when I was at YouTube at the time was — archived recording (youtube clip) Say hi to everybody. guillaume chaslot When you watch a cat video then the recommendation engine can say, oh, you watched a cat video so we’re going to give you — archived recording (youtube clip) Meow. guillaume chaslot — another cat video, and then another cat video. archived recording (youtube clip) Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. guillaume chaslot And then another cat video — more of the same, more of the same, more of the same. At the time I was really worried about wasting human potential. If you could on all of YouTube, but then the thing that’s going to keep you watching the most is cats, is it the right thing to do to give you, again, cats on cats on cats?

kevin roose

And over time Guillaume realizes that this filter bubble problem he’s been noticing, it’s actually worse than everyone just watching the same cat videos over and over.

^archived recording^ (demonstraters)

[CHANTING]

guillaume chaslot So at the time it was a demonstration in Cairo. kevin roose In Cairo, Egypt? guillaume chaslot Yes. archived recording Violence has erupted in the Egyptian capital Cairo, as those —

kevin roose

He sees these news videos, these political videos, like this conflict in Egypt that’s going on at the time. And he sees that the algorithm is showing people in different groups, the same thing, over and over.

guillaume chaslot You would see a video from the site of the protesters, and then it will recommend another video from the site of protesters. So you would only see the site of protesters. If you start with the side of the police, you would only see the side of the police. archived recording [SPEAKING ARABIC] guillaume chaslot Then you had only one side of reality. You couldn’t see both sides. archived recording [SPEAKING ARABIC] guillaume chaslot So these two different realities were created. kevin roose Once you recognized that there were these filter bubbles, these sort of algorithmic echo chambers, what did you do about it? guillaume chaslot So the first thing I didn’t want to do is complain about it and try to find, like, the bad example that shows what’s wrong with it. Because I didn’t want to be the grumpy French guy who complains. So what I did is side projects. I created, with another engineer, who’s still at YouTube, we created an algorithm that did the exact opposite. It got out of the filter bubble. kevin roose And did any of these side projects have any impact at YouTube? Like, did they move into testing, were they implemented, did managers like them? guillaume chaslot No, there were always just prototype. But then they were never even test on real users. kevin roose And why do you think that is? guillaume chaslot I mean, the way they were saying it is that, OK, it’s now our objective. And our objective was to increase watch time. kevin roose So, the problem of political polarization — of giving people only one side of a story — you’re noticing this problem while you’re at YouTube, and it sounds like you are trying to address it through these side projects. But you know, your bosses are not saying, Guillaume, that’s the best idea we’ve ever heard, let’s put it live on the site right now. Like, how did things unfold for you at YouTube from there? guillaume chaslot Yeah. So when I proposed the third project to my manager, he told me, “If I were you, I wouldn’t work on it too much.” And then for a few months I didn’t work on it. Then when I started working on it again, then I got fired for a bad performance review. Which is true, because then they spend so much time on this project that I spend less time on my main project.

kevin roose

So Guillaume left Google — actually left Silicon Valley altogether and moved back to France. And he says that he kind of stopped thinking about the YouTube algorithm altogether. Until one day, like an old French romance, the two meet again.

[music]

guillaume chaslot I was in a bus ride from Lyon to Paris, which was a six-hour bus ride. I was working in Paris, but I had family in Lyon, so I was visiting my family and then coming back to work in Paris. And there were these new buses with Wi-Fi. So I thought, OK, let’s give it a try.

kevin roose

So he’s sitting there on the bus. He’s on his laptop. He’s doing some work. And he notices that on the screen next to him —

guillaume chaslot My neighbor was watching YouTube videos for a very long time.

kevin roose