Thread by @gchaslot

In the current context, which YouTube channel is particularly promoted by YouTube's Artificial Intelligence?

A Ukrainian channel that copy-pastes Fox News videos

Read that again, but slowly. 1/

algotransparency.org/?date=03-10-20…

That channel did >2M views in the last few days. It was an increase of 3,080.6% month-to-month.

It's now called "BREAKING NEWS"

Full stats:
socialblade.com/youtube/channe…

2/

It was called "Florans UA" before the 30th of September.

Note that the channel describes itself as Ukrainian, but we can't be certain it's Ukrainian. In any case, it's performing exceptionally well.

3/

There are many weird things about this channel:

- some of its video is 1 second long and have hundreds of thousands of views
- clicking on the channel page tells us the channel does not exists
- it has no original content

Check it out:

4/

Here is another example of the 1 second video:



5/

Comments on the video might also be fake. In any case, they're extremely aggressive:

6/

So what's up with this channel @youtube?

What we know for sure:
- it copy-pastes Fox News
- it makes 1s videos with many views (!)
- the algorithm loved it yesterday, recommending it from more than 193 channels (!)
- the views on this channel increased 3,080.6% in a month

7/