Cited by 580Misinformation and Its ImpactsPopulism, Right-Wing MovementsSocial Media and Politics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 22 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 13 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube

Open access
Ribeiro, Manoel Horta, Ottoni, Raphael, West, Robert, Almeida, Virgílio A. F., Meira, Wagner·2020·Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

Abstract

Non-profits, as well as the media, have hypothesized the existence of a radicalization pipeline on YouTube, claiming that users systematically progress towards more extreme content on the platform. Yet, there is to date no substantial quantitative evidence of this alleged pipeline. To close this gap, we conduct a large-scale audit of user radicalization on YouTube. We analyze 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels, which we broadly classified into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (I.D.W.), and the Alt-right. According to the aforementioned radicalization hypothesis, channels in the I.D.W. and the Alt-lite serve as gateways to fringe far-right ideology, here represented by Alt-right channels. Processing 72M+ comments, we show that the three channel types indeed increasingly share the same user base; that users consistently migrate from milder to more extreme content; and that a large percentage of users who consume Alt-right content now consumed Alt-lite and I.D.W. content in the past. We also probe YouTube's recommendation algorithm, looking at more than 2M video and channel recommendations between May/July 2019. We find that Alt-lite content is easily reachable from I.D.W. channels, while Alt-right videos are reachable only through channel recommendations. Overall, we paint a comprehensive picture of user radicalization on YouTube.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This paper audits whether YouTube users radicalize across I.D.W., Alt-lite, and Alt-right channels, using 330,925 videos from 349 channels and 72M+ comments. It finds that the three communities increasingly share commenters, that users migrate from milder to more extreme content, and that Alt-right channels are reachable through YouTube’s channel recommendations even without personalization.

Key findings

  • The commenting user bases of the I.D.W., Alt-lite, and Alt-right increasingly overlap: in 2018, the Jaccard similarity between Alt-lite and I.D.W. reached almost 30%, and the Overlap Coefficient of Alt-right with Alt-lite and I.D.W. reached around 50%, meaning about half of users who commented on Alt-right channels also commented in the other communities.
  • Users systematically migrate toward more extreme content: among users who in 2006–2012 commented only on I.D.W. or Alt-lite content (227,945 users), by 2018 around 10% were lightly exposed to Alt-right content and roughly 4% were mildly or severely exposed, about 9K users total; among those who in 2017 commented only on Alt-lite or I.D.W. videos (1,251,674 users), approximately 12% were exposed, more than 60K users.
  • In 2018, roughly 40% of Alt-right commenting users could be traced back to cohorts that had commented only on Alt-lite or I.D.W. videos in the past; media-channel users never surpassed 6% for any exposure level. For light exposure in 2018, 23.3% traced back to prior Alt-lite-only commenters versus 7.6% to prior I.D.W.-only commenters.
  • Recommendation simulations show Alt-lite content is easily reachable from I.D.W. channels, while Alt-right videos are reachable only through channel recommendations: channel reachability@5 for Alt-right was about 4% from Alt-lite and 1.5% from I.D.W.; starting from I.D.W., there was about a 10% chance of being in an Alt-lite channel at the next step and 25% chance of having found at least one Alt-lite channel in 5 steps. Video recommendations made Alt-right much less reachable, with reachability@5 around 0.05% from Alt-lite.

Methods

  • Large-scale audit of YouTube channels classified into Media, Alt-lite, I.D.W., and Alt-right. Data collection used seed channels, keywords, and iterative featured/related-channel expansion; two authors manually annotated channels over 3 weeks with interannotator agreement of 75.57% (95% CI [67.5, 82.5]), yielding 85 I.D.W., 112 Alt-lite, 84 Alt-right, and 68 media channels.
  • Dataset: 349 channels, 330,925 videos, 72,069,878 comments, 5,980,709 commenting users, 2,474,044 video recommendations, and 14,283 channel recommendations. Data collection occurred 19–30 May 2019, with recommendations collected May–July 2019 using crawlers, 22 channel-recommendation rounds, 19 video-recommendation rounds, VPNs from 7 locations, random channel visit order, and no logged-in personalization.
  • Analyses included Jaccard and Overlap Coefficient set similarities across commenting-user sets, cohort tracking of users who commented only on milder communities and later commented on Alt-right videos, and random-walk simulations on weighted recommendation graphs (10K runs, 5 steps) to measure probability and reachability.

Limitations

  • The paper states that it cannot obtain the entire history of YouTube recommendations, so algorithmic analyses are limited to a time slice of a constantly changing black box; it also cannot fully tease apart the algorithm’s influence in earlier periods, and the recommendation analysis does not account for personalization.
  • The paper states that it provides little insight into why radicalization pipelines exist, and that its focus is on basic statistics and user trajectories rather than tracing the evolution of speech or narratives over time.
  • The paper states that its radicalization findings rely on the assumptions that commenting users are a good enough proxy for radicalization and that comments are supportive of the videos they accompany; it supports these assumptions with a manual check of 900 randomly selected comments, finding only 5 that could be interpreted as criticisms, and with higher like proportions for the communities of interest (>91% mean, >96% median) than for media channels (85% mean, 93% median). Evident from the text: channel labeling is fuzzy and conservative, and the video-recommendation simulation is less realistic because it ignores untracked videos.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1145/3351095.3372879

Cites

22 of 22 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

75 Own result · 18 Own method · 12 Own interpretation · 10 Not checked yet · 7 No basis given

Verify all 13 references — free account

Show all 82 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 27
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 2
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 15
40 of 40
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    There is to date no substantial quantitative evidence of the alleged radicalization pipeline on YouTube.

    “Yet, there is to date no substantial quantitative evidence of this alleged pipeline.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Commenting users are a good enough proxy for radicalization.

    “Noticeably, the findings related to this research question make the implicit assumption that commenting users are a good enough proxy for radicalization, and that comments in YouTube channels are supportive of the videos they are associated with.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Comments in YouTube channels are supportive of the videos they are associated with.

    “Noticeably, the findings related to this research question make the implicit assumption that commenting users are a good enough proxy for radicalization, and that comments in YouTube channels are supportive of the videos they are associated with.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The removed channel 'theglassblindspot' is small.

    “Since the channel is small”
4 of 4

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Citations

Cites

Show all 23 references

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Mathew Ingram . 2018. Most Americans say they have lost trust in the media. Columbia Journalism Review ( 2018 ). https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trust-in-media-down.php Mathew Ingram. 2018. Most Americans say they have lost trust in the media. Columbia Journalism Review (2018). https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trust-in-media-down.php
  2. Brendan Joel Kelly . 2017 . Lauren Southern: The alt-right's Canadian dog whistler. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/07/lauren-southern-alt-right%E2%80%99s-canadian-dog-whistler Brendan Joel Kelly. 2017. Lauren Southern: The alt-right's Canadian dog whistler. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/07/lauren-southern-alt-right%E2%80%99s-canadian-dog-whistler
  3. Max Kutner . 2016. Roosh V's journey from pickup artist to right-wing provocateur. Newsweek ( 2016 ). https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/21/roosh-v-pickup-artist-right-wing-provocateur-509319.html Max Kutner. 2016. Roosh V's journey from pickup artist to right-wing provocateur. Newsweek (2016). https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/21/roosh-v-pickup-artist-right-wing-provocateur-509319.html
  4. Newman Nic , Richard Fletcher , Antonis Kalogeropoulos , David AL Levy, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen . 2018 . Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018. Technical Report. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Newman Nic, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David AL Levy, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. 2018. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018. Technical Report. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

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Metadata

Authors
Ribeiro, M. H., Ottoni, R., West, R., Almeida, V. A. F., & Meira, W.
Affiliations
  • École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
  • Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (BR)
  • UFMG
Venue
Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
Publisher
ACM
Published
2020-01-27
Pages
131-141
OpenAlex
W2969399596
Cited by
580
References
23
Citations by year
2026: 110 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 89 · 2023: 105 · 2022: 78 · 2021: 69 · 2020: 52
FWCI
161.71
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
  • Atmosphere
  • Capes
  • INCT-Cyber
  • Google Research Award
  • Fapemig
  • CNPq
  • MASWEB
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
Keywords
radicalization, YouTube, far-right ideology, alt-right, user engagement

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