the rise of propaganda to masquerade as news.” One now-common tactic, she said, occurs “during major news events, natural calamities, terrorist attacks, and military conflicts, where old and unrelated videos are shared out-of-context on YouTube.”77 The platform faces a difficult task in monitoring and taking action against such activity, according to Prateek Waghre, a researcher with the Technology and Policy Program at the Bangalore-based Takshashila Institution. “You will rarely find a YouTube content creator who sticks to just one language, or especially just English. They are most likely switching between at least English, Hindi, probably a bunch of other languages as well,” Waghre told us. The linguistic jumps occur not just within videos, but sometimes within a single sentence. Complicating these challenges, the Indian government enacted a law in 2021 giving itself the authority to demand removal or reinstatement of content on social media platforms.78 Brazil With more than 100 million YouTube users in a nation of 215 million, Brazil is the platform’s fourth-largest market, behind only India, Indonesia, and the U.S. By many accounts, the videosharing service has helped enable the rise of the hard-right political movement led by Jair Bolsonaro. A former military officer and obscure legislator who leapt to prominence and was elected president in 2018, Bolsonaro and his supporters have harnessed the extraordinary reach of YouTube and other social media platforms. Bolsonaro, whose harsh tone and savvy communication tactics are often compared to those of former U.S. President Donald Trump, was an early adopter of YouTube, using the platform to spread videos that, according to The New York Times, “falsely accused left-wing academics of plotting to force schools to distribute ‘gay kits’ to convert children to homosexuality.” Bolsonaro’s supporters rely heavily on messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram to attack his opponents and amplify his factually challenged positions on topics such as Covid-19 vaccinations, which the Brazilian head of state has suggested are dangerous. These efforts often involve the circulation of videos initially posted on YouTube. Ricardo Gandour, the São Paulo-based former editor-in-chief of the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, told us that Bolsonaro’s ascendance underscores the power of social media. And he adds: “YouTube is no doubt the most dangerous platform for disinformation in Brazil.” Tai Nalon, chief executive of the Brazilian fact-checking organization Aos Fatos, concurs that YouTube plays a central role as the video depository for users of other platforms and that the “Bolsonarista disinformation agenda occupies a disproportionate space on social media.” He describes the president’s “network of influence” as grounded in "the exaltation of masculinity, fascist nostalgia, and conspiracy paranoia.” Aos Fatos has documented that, as of March 21, 2022, Bolsonaro has made at least 5,084 false or misleading statements since taking office. The president, for his part, has lashed out at fact-checkers and their “absurd arbitrariness.”80 Brazilian misinformation on YouTube goes beyond the political realm. A study published in 2021 in the academic journal Media, Culture & Society concluded that 80% of a sample of nearly 600 YouTube videos about a 2019 oil spill along Brazil’s northeast coast consisted of misinformation. Among the consequences of this kind of pollution of the information environment, the study’s authors wrote, are “algorithmic resistance” to fact-based journalism and erosion of “public debate about environmental catastrophes in favor of private interests (fake politics).”81 YouTube is buffeted by conflicting political and legal forces in Brazil. It confronted Bolsonaro in 2021 by removing videos posted on his channel that made false claims about Covid-19 cures and a supposed link between coronavirus vaccines and AIDS. In the summer of 2021, the country’s federal electoral court ordered the platform to suspend shared-revenue payments to more than a dozen channels accused of spreading election disinformation. Then, in the fall, Bolsonaro pushed in the other direction, issuing a temporary ban on social media companies removing certain claims, including his statements that if he fails to win reelection this year, voting fraud will be the reason.82 Nevertheless, the platform has promised that it would apply to Brazil the same policies it began enforcing in the U.S. in 2020, removing baseless videos seeking to undermine trust in elections and democracy.83 Google has funded a variety of initiatives in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America to promote digital media literacy and the dissemination of accurate information about politics and public events. But some who are familiar with the practical effects of such efforts remain skeptical. For such a wealthy company, it is a “cup of coins—you know, pocket money,” Gandour, the Sao Paulo journalist, told us. Myanmar YouTube is a distant second to Facebook in terms of popularity among social media users in Myanmar. But the video-sharing site’s expanding role as a conduit for political disinformation in the troubled Southeast Asian country was becoming clear to fact-checking organizations and other civil society groups even before Myanmar’s military retook power in February 2021. The army coup was cheered by dozens of pro-military YouTube channels, some with millions of views, that spread falsehoods undermining the election in 2020 of a fragile civilian government, which was then swept aside by the military just a few months later. Some of the channels posed as news outlets, and collectively the bogus YouTube videos often had greater reach than actual journalism organizations.84 (The company hasn’t launched a local iteration of the platform in Myanmar; users there see a generic global version.) HOW YOUTUBE SPREADS HARMFUL CONTENT – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT 17