According to a recent study, YouTube’s video recommendation tool may expose younger viewers to violent and gun-related content. The Tech Transparency Project experiment served as the basis for the investigation. The nonprofit organization researches social media platforms. The team of researchers created two YouTube profiles that mimicked internet activities that 9-year-old boys could find entertaining. The information in the two accounts was identical. The sole distinction was that one account exclusively selected to watch YouTube’s recommended videos. The other disregarded the recommendations made by the video provider.
The company discovered that there were a lot of explicit videos on the account that choose to watch YouTube’s recommendations. These included how-to videos on school shootings and how to fully automate weapons. A large number of the recommended videos are against YouTube’s own rules on graphic or violent material. YouTube has technological capabilities designed to limit certain types of content. However, the study indicates that these techniques are not effective in preventing young users from accessing violent content. According to the study’s experts, the tools might even be directing kids to violent and extremist films.
The Tech Transparency Project is headed by Katie Paul. “Video games are among the most popular activities for kids,” the speaker stated. Even if YouTube is leading people there, you can play games like “Call of Duty” without really ending up at a gun store. Paul went on, “It’s not the kids, it’s not the video games. The algorithms are to blame. An algorithm is a series of instructions used to solve a problem or carry out a computation. Based on consumers’ historical viewing habits, social media businesses employ algorithms to suggest information they might find interesting. Users are recommended that content by algorithmic technologies. In a single month, the accounts that clicked on the recommended videos on YouTube were shown 382 distinct videos about guns.
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