Thread by @jeffjarvis

"Our results indicate that trends in video-based political news consumption are determined by a complicated combination of user preferences, platform features, and the supply-and-demand dynamics of the broader web." Yes, no single algorithmic folk devil.

https://twitter.com/chris_bail/status/1425100211832164367

Just read the full paper, which is very good. Most provocative to me is the rise of what they call the anti-woke, which is the cancel-culture, Harper's letter, "intellectual dark web" ilk (some of whom would claim to be liberal) being co-opted by the far-right. Danger! 1/

"Even if anti-woke channel owners do not see themselves associating with right or far-right ideologies, their viewers do." That is, these self-righteous chumps (see certain NYT columnists & allies) are being used. 2/

News accounts for only 11% of YouTube consumption (higher than FB) and "is dominated by mainstream, and generally centrist or left-leaning sources." 3/

"The consumption of far-right content is small in terms of both number of viewers and total watch time." 4/

"The largest community of news consumers...was the 'left' mainstream community... The far-right community was the second-smallest (after far-left)..." But mass media amplify that far-right group far beyond their population. THAT is a problem to address. 5/

At the end of the four-year study, "the anti-woke community ended the period accounting for more watch time than any category except left." Again: Danger! 6/

"The pathways by which users reach far-right videos are diverse and only a fraction can plausibly be attributed to platform recommendations" -- i.e, the algo. Further to that... 7/

"Approximately 50% of far-right/right videos and more than 30% of anti-woke videos are begun after visiting a right or far-right news domain such as foxnews.com, breitbart.com, and infowars.com." 8/

"These results indicate little evidence for the popular claim that YouTube drives users to consume more radical political content, either left or right..." 9/

"YouTube should otherwise be viewed as part of a larger information ecosystem in which conspiracy theories, misinformation, and hyperpartisan content are widely available, easily discovered, and activity sought out." 10/

"To the extent that the growing consumption of radical political content is a social problem, our findings suggest that it is a much broader phenomenon than simply the policies & algorithmic properties of a single platform, even one as large as YouTube." /11

Congrats to all the authors, including friends @DavMicRot & @duncanjwatts. /12 fin