Communications of the ACM
Banning Extreme Views on YouTube Really Does Help Stop Their Spread
Banning people who voice extreme views on social media does actually reduce their audience, a new study has found.
Credit: CNN
The results of a study indicated that banning people who espouse extreme views from the YouTube online video platform shrinks their audience.
National Taiwan University's Adrian Rauchfleisch and Harvard University's Jonas Kaiser reviewed more than 11,000 YouTube channels of all political varieties between January 2018 and October 2019, tracking the number of videos each account posted, how many views they received, and whether they stayed on YouTube during the study period.
Approximately one in 20 channels was deleted or banned, while 25% were removed for copyright infringement, with far-right-leaning channels more likely to be barred for breaching hate speech regulations.
The average YouTube-posted video got 19.5 times more views than the average on extremist video-hosting platform BitChute, although this differed by channel.
Said Rebekah Tromble at George Washington University, “We still have a lot to learn about the larger video-sharing ecosystem.”
From New Scientist
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