YouTube Extremism and the Long Tail
Zeynep Tufekci, the insightful scholar and observer of sociology in the internet era, argued over the weekend that YouTube is unwittingly radicalizing some of its viewers through the videos that it automatically recommends that they watch next.
She was watching Donald Trump rallies while conducting research, sitting through clip after clip, when eventually she noticed “autoplay” videos “that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content.” Then she watched a bunch of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders videos. Soon, “I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast,” she wrote, “including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11.”
The pattern held across other topics:
Videos about vegetarianism led to videos
