TheirTube

Website to step into other people's Youtube recommendation bubble

2020

Summary

What if you could step inside someone else’s YouTube bubble and see the world the way they do?

The "Recommended for You" section displayed on YouTube is highly personalized for each user. How might our perspective of the world change if we could experience the recommendations meant for someone else? TheirTube is a web service that lets you experience the filter bubbles of others' information environments. It offers an opportunity to notice the uniqueness of the information displayed in "recommended videos." TheirTube has personas based on six entirely different YouTube user viewing histories.Users can see what kind of videos line up on the YouTube homepage from the perspective of these personas. Each persona is created based on real interviews, and you can see videos recommended to someone who has fallen for conspiracy theories, or those who are politically liberal or conservative in their thinking. The source code is available on Github, and anyone can create their own TheirTube.

YouTubeに表示される「あなたへのおすすめ」という欄は、ユーザーごとに高度にパーソナライズされている。では、自分以外のレコメンデーションを体験できたら、世界の捉え方はどのように変わるだろうか? 他人の情報環境のフィルターバブルを体験することができるTheirTubeでは「おすすめの映像」に表示される情報の特異性に気づくきっかけを与えてくれるウェブサービスである。TheirTubeには全く異なる視聴履歴をもった6つのYouTubeのユーザーアカウントを元にしたペルソナ設定されている。ユーザーはこれらのペルソナの目線からYouTubeのトップページにどういう映像が並ぶのかを見ることができる。それぞれのペルソナは実際のインタビューを元に作られており、陰謀論にはまってしまった人や、政治的にリベラル派、もしくは保守派な思考の人におすすめされる映像を見ることができる。ソースコードはGithub上に公開されており、誰もが自らのTheirTubeを作ることもできる。


website : https://their.tube
*The website stopped updating due to Youtube blocking our scraper

Scraper for TheirTube open source on Github

On an average day, people around the world watch one billion hours of video on YouTube. 70% of these videos are recommended by an AI

I think the proverb “Fish discover water last” can also be said about how we are blind to the nature of the recommendation bubble that we are in.

Nowadays with an AI curating almost all of what we see, the only way for a person to get a better perspective on their own media environment is to see what others' look like. By offering a tool to understand what the other recommendation bubbles look like, we hope to help people to get a better perspective on their own recommendation bubbles.

Awards

2021 - STARTS PRIZE 2021 - Nomination - TheirTube
2019- Mozilla Creative Media Awards 2020 - TheirTube

Appearance

2021 - ARS ELECTRONICA - TheirTube
2021 - STARTS Prize @ Bozar, Brussels

Project Details

Date » 2020 ~ 2021
Project's Nature » Commission project from Mozilla

Credit

My Role » research , design, development
Illustration » Polina Alexeenko


Press Coverage

INDEPENDENT » YouTube bias exposed by 'TheirTube' project that shows how platform looks to conspiracy theorists
WIRED JAPAN » "陰謀論者や地球温暖化否定者のYouTubeレコメンデーションには、何が表示される? フィルターバブルを“体験”可能にする「TheirTube」