Incident 348: YouTube Recommendation Reportedly Pushed Election Fraud Content to Skeptics Disproportionately
Description: YouTube's recommendation algorithm allegedly pushed 2020's US Presidential Election fraud content to users most skeptical of the election's legitimacy disproportionately compared to least skeptical users.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: YouTube developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed YouTube users skeptical of US election results.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
348
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2020-11-01
Editors
Khoa Lam
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
Skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the United States led to a historic attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 and represents one of the greatest challenges to America's democratic institutions in over a ce…
For years, researchers have suggested that algorithms feeding users content aren't the cause of online echo chambers, but are more likely due to users actively seeking out content that aligns with their beliefs. This week, New York Universi…
We find that those most skeptical of the legitimacy of the 2020 election were recommended three times as many election-fraud related videos as were the least skeptical participants.
Abstract
Skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 presiden…
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.
