Incident 263: YouTube Recommendations Implicated in Political Radicalization of User

Description: YouTube’s personalization and recommendation algorithms were alleged to have pushed and exposed its young male users to political extremism and misinformation, driving them towards far-right ideologies such as neo-Nazism and white supremacy.

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Alleged: YouTube developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed YouTube young male users , YouTube male users and Caleb Cain.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
263
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2015-09-01
Editors
Khoa Lam

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

The Making of a YouTube Radical
nytimes.com · 2019

Martinsburg, W.Va. — Caleb Cain pulled a Glock pistol from his waistband, took out the magazine and casually tossed both onto the kitchen counter.

“I bought it the day after I got death threats,” he said.

The threats, Mr. Cain explained, ca…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.