Last week, ISD released its Pulling Back the Curtain series, a four-part investigation digging into YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. Analysts found that YouTube is failing to properly safeguard young users: accounts set up to represent teens were served sexualised, misogynistic and suicide-related content.
The research, by Senior Analyst Aoife Gallagher, Digital Research Analysts Lucy Cooper and Rhea Bhatnagar, and Senior Digital Research Manager Cooper Gatewood, also discovered anti-vaccine content and clips of Andrew Tate, the misogynist ‘lifestyle guru’ banned by YouTube, in the platform’s search results and recommended videos.
The executive summary of Pulling Back the Curtain is available here. You can also read the in-depth investigations on the recommendations fed to accounts who showed interest in gaming, male lifestyle gurus, ‘mommy vloggers’ and Spanish language news.
Also in this newsletter:
- Russian influence operation Doppelganger linked to fringe advertising company
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Canada’s right-wing extremists and the Israel-Hamas conflict
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Antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate on Canadian YouTube after 7 October
- Network of Facebook pages and groups, ‘Patriots Run Project’, exposes Meta’s transparency failures
- Our staff features in WIRED, the Beg to Differ podcast, and more.
