A boy watching gaming videos like Roblox, lego star wars either Grand Theft Auto may be recommended by Youtube algorithm content related to weapons, school shootings or serial killers. These are the conclusions of a study carried out in November 2022 by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), an American research and information center that analyzes the influence of new technologies.
From video games to real violence
For a month, four “test” YouTube accounts viewed video game content. Two, identified as 9-year-old boys, watched videos on lego Star Wars, Roblox, Among us, uncharted 4 EITHER Five nights at Freddy’s, a horror video game whose main protagonist is a humanoid bear. Two others, to imitate 14-year-olds, focused on Grand Theft Auto, aura, obligations either red dead redemption.
Every child in the study was recommended violent content, from fictional scenes of school shootings to demonstrations of the damage a gun can inflict on the human body, tutorials on how to turn a gun into an automatic weapon, or excerpts from a movie about youth. of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Up to 44 gun videos per day
One of the two accounts in each age group did not watch recommended videos, while the other did: in this case, violent content was recommended up to ten times more than to the account that did not rule it out.
In total, in a month, the streaming site offered more than 1,325 videos about firearms to the 14-year-old boy who followed its recommendations, or 44 per day, and 382 total to his 9-year-old doppelganger, including explanation. the effects of a firearm on a human torso or head.
Among the videos powered by the algorithm, a montage of Gus Van Sant’s film Elephant, which chronicles the Columbine school massacre in Colorado, paired with the song “Pumped Up Kicks” by the band Foster the People, which speaks of a troubled teenager who imagines himself shooting people.
This video, like others detailed in the report, has problematic associations. According to court documents, Nikolas Cruz, the young gunman who went on a rampage at the Parkland High School shooting in Florida in 2018, had searched YouTube multiple times before his attack.
The algorithm in question
Video games are often presented on the political and media scene as vectors of violence among young people, particularly in the United States, prey to murders with firearms in schools – 51 deaths in 2022 alone according to the count of Education Week. These are most perpetrated by offenders under the age of 21. If this theory has ever been substantiated, this study here implicates YouTube’s recommendation algorithm as the link between these two types of content.
This observation is all the more disturbing given that YouTube is the most popular social media platform among American children ages 13-17, with 95% using it according to a 2022 survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Research Center. .
Many of these videos, however, violated the site’s policy, which prohibits “violent or gory content intended to shock or disgust viewers,” depicting “dangerous or harmful acts involving minors,” or intended to “provide instructions on how to convert a firearm into an automatic weapon or equipped with an automatic fire simulation system”, notes the TTP Some are even currently monetized.
These findings go against YouTube’s statements on its blog in 2021, of which the VP of engineering claimed to “give responsible recommendations their first priority,” adding that “recently published studies conclude that YouTube recommendations do not lead viewers to extreme content. This study will have shown otherwise.
Source: BFM TV
