The NYU Center for Business and Human Rights began publishing reports on the effects of social media on democracy in the wake of Russia’s exploitation of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. We initially advocated for heightened industry self-regulation, in part to forestall government intervention that could lead to First Amendment complications. As the inadequacy of industry reforms has become clear, we have supplemented our calls for self-regulation with a proposal for enhancement of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection authority to oversee the industry.1 In Part 4, we offer a concise version of the FTC proposal, as well as a series of recommendations to YouTube itself. The report does not address the problem of YouTube hosting potentially harmful videos aimed at children and teenagers. This persistent phenomenon deserves continued scrutiny but is beyond the scope of our analysis.2 Recommendations in Brief To YouTube: 1 Disclose more information about how the platform works: A place to start is explaining the criteria algorithms use to rank, recommend, and remove content—as well as how the criteria are weighted relative to one another. 2 Facilitate greater access to data that researchers need to study YouTube: The platform should ease its resistance to providing social scientists with information for empirical studies, including random samples of videos. 3 Expand and improve human review of potential harmful content: YouTube’s parent company, Google, says that it has more than 20,000 people around the world working on content moderation, but it declines to specify how many do hands-on review of YouTube videos. Whatever that number is, it needs to grow, and outsourced moderators should be brought in-house. 4 Invest more in relationships with civil society and news organizations: In light of their contribution to the collapse of the advertising-based business model of many U.S. news-gathering organizations, the platforms should step up current efforts to ensure the viability of the journalism business, especially at the local level. Recommendations to the U.S. government 2 5 Allocate political capital to reduce the malign side effects of social media: President Biden’s off-thecuff expressions of impatience with the industry aren't sufficient. He ought to make a carefully considered statement and lend his authority to legislative efforts to extend federal oversight authority. Former President Obama’s recent speech at Stanford about disinformation provided a helpful foundation. 6 Enhance the FTC’s authority to oversee social media: Some of the issues raised in this report could be addressed by a proposal we made in a February 2022 white paper—namely, that Congress should authorize the Federal Trade Commission to use its consumer protection authority to require social media companies to disclose more data about their business models and operations, as well as provide procedurally adequate content moderation. HOW YOUTUBE SPREADS HARMFUL CONTENT – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT