Endnotes 1 https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/ftc-whitepaper 2 https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/guns-drugs-andskin-bleaching-youtube-kids-still-poses-risks-children; https://www. theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/05/youtube-kids-shows-videospromoting-drug-culture-firearms-toddlers 3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/16/facebookyoutube-russian-bans/ 4 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/technology/youtube-russia-rt.html 5 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf 6 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/29/law-counterputins-propaganda-unused-00020805 7 https://time.com/6156927/youtube-russia-ukraine-disinformation/ 8 In April, Roskomnadzor accused YouTube of spreading “fake” videos to discredit the Russian military. But rather than shut down the platform, the regulator imposed only mild discipline, such as fining Google and arranging for Russian search engines to attach a warning to YouTube videos saying that the company was violating Russian law. Separately, some digitally sophisticated Russians were able to use virtual private networks (VPNs) or the anonymizing website Tor to access versions of Facebook and Twitter. 9 Zelensky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLJGVJrprs0; Navalny’s allies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2gNZrfmcVU. In an April 2022 interview with CNN, a top Navalny lieutenant called YouTube Russia’s main source of “the actual real news.” As of mid-May, YouTube said it had removed more than 8,000 channels and more than 60,000 videos related to the war for violating its content policies on misinformation, hate speech, and graphic violence, among others. 10 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/32/e2101967118 11 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/22/youtubeukraine-invasion-russia-video-removals 12 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/16/facebookyoutube-russian-bans/ 13 YouTube has stumbled during the Russian invasion. Early in the war, it excluded independent broadcaster Echo of Moscow before criticism prompted it to restore the station. 14 https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/an-open-letter-toyoutubes-ceo-from-the-worlds-fact-checkers/?s=03 15 https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-usein-2021/ 16 https://blog.youtube/press/ 17 YouTube’s near-monopolistic position in the long-form video market: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-LongitudinalAnalysis-of-YouTube's-Promotion-of-Faddoul-Chaslot/ e9b8266ec5d94660dde5f89b4e01586dcddf2515 18 https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20220202_alphabet_10K. pdf?cache=fc81690\. TikTok has carved out a significant portion of the short-video market, especially among younger users: https://www. emarketer.com/content/tiktok-youtube-marketers. 19 In December 2017, YouTube said it would expand its content moderator workforce to 10,000: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/expandingour-work-against-abuse-of-our/. Today, the company told us, that figure stands at 20,000. 20 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/25/google-youtubeadvertising-extremist-content-att-verizon 21 https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q1-2022/ 22 https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/inside-responsibility-whats-nexton-our-misinfo-efforts/ 23 https://chequeado.com/investigaciones/the-international-scheme-ofdoctors-for-the-truth-a-denialist-trademark-registered-by-natalia-prego/ 24 https://www.ellinikahoaxes.gr/2020/10/18/fuellmich-video-with-falsecoronavirus-info/ 25 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil. html 26 Ethiopia: https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/the-interaction-ofmass-media-and-social-media-in-fuelling-ethnic-violence-in-ethiopia/; Phillipines: https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-philippines-election/. 27 https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/polarization-report-page 28 https://www.npr.org/2021/04/13/986678544/exploring-youtube-andthe-spread-of-disinformation 29 https://www.wired.com/story/why-isnt-susan-wojcicki-getting-grilledby-congress/ 30 https://www.lawfareblog.com/documents-senate-intelligencecommittee-publishes-two-reports-internet-research-agency 31 Wojcicki does occasionally surface publicly, as in a 2019 interview with “60 Minutes” and, in 2021, a Business Insider profile and at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington. 32 https://tcrn.ch/3EWYVlz 33 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/25/youtubecontent-moderation-strategy/ 34 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politicsradical.html 35 https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/01/11/youtube-most-watch-timedriven-by-recommendations/ 36 https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report/ 37 https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-four-rs-of-responsibility-raiseand-reduce/ 38 In a blog post, YouTube explained that it uses algorithms called “classifiers” to identify “borderline content.” The classifiers rely on human evaluators who use publicly available guidelines to rate channels and videos based on factors such as accuracy, deceptiveness, intolerance, and “potential to cause harm.” 39 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03318 40 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/32/e2101967118 41 In 2021, researchers at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics published a study finding that YouTube’s diminished recommendations of conspiratorial and “politically extreme” videos had a salutary ripple effect on other platforms: Sharing of such YouTube videos decreased on both Twitter and Reddit. But the researchers also determined that, in the wake of YouTube’s intervention, sharing of videos from conspiracy-oriented YouTube channels increased significantly on Reddit, with no meaningful change on Twitter. Other academics are skeptical that YouTube’s algorithms play a role in radicalization, emphasizing that the supply of extremist content merely corresponds to user demand. 42 “There has been, and there continues to be, user radicalization on YouTube,” according to a research team based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. After studying user behavior as seen in more than 72 million comments on two million YouTube videos in 2020, ranging from mildly conservative to the far-right fringe, the Swiss-based group found that “users consistently migrate from milder to more extreme content.” But the researchers couldn’t determine the mechanism causing this migration. 43 https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/exposure-to-alternativeextremist-content-on-youtube HOW YOUTUBE SPREADS HARMFUL CONTENT – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT 23