Sign the petition:
I am Joan Marie Arroyo Alcon, known online as JMAA, I am an independent content creator, game developer, independent journalist, owner of the jmaa.tv website and musician, I’ve been creating content for over 10 years, and I was one of the people who escaped the far right being deradicalized, during the COVID pandemic.
Recently, I’ve come across some data from an experiment I did for research on YouTube, and I can confirm that there’s possibly a right-wing bias of sorts on YouTube. YouTube so far has claimed to be left-leaning and progressive as a company, however, the YouTube algorithm has benefited for so long right wing content especially during time periods such as GamerGate, Trump’s election as the President of the United States and so on.
It is no surprise for me to discover that YouTube favors, at least in its algorithm, right-wing content that can lead to right-wing extremism on the platform, leading to a potential danger of radicalization that could only lead to terrorism or other similar acts.
Yesterday, on September 11th 2022, I conducted the experiment in the following way: I opened two separate YouTube/Google accounts through a Tor VPN on the Brave browser, to ensure complete clean data on clean slate accounts. One will be watching left wing content such as Vaush, Xanderhal, Keffals, etc., and the other will be watching right-wing content, such as Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and so on. I watch on each account a total of 4 separate videos, during a watchtime of 5 minutes maximum per video, without adding additional engagement to the videos; no likes, no subscriptions, no comments. Just watch these videos for 5 minutes max. Then, after each video, I go back to the homepage and count how many left-wing or right-wing videos on each account are recommended in there at first glance, without scrolling down or anything.
The results are pretty stark and scary:
Right-wing content recommended on the right-wing account doubles the amount of left-wing content recommended on the left-wing account. At video #4, right-wing recommendations scale up to 11, compared to the 4 videos I get on the left-wing account from left-wing content, and that includes regular videos and YouTube shorts as well.
There’s also a very noticeable thing with right-wing content: they are more prevalent in YouTube Shorts format than the actual left-wing content, so there’s a bigger right-wing presence in YouTube Shorts as well.
With this information, it is clearly evident one of the following options:
YouTube’s algorithm favors easily digestible right-wing content…
YouTube has a right-wing agenda.
Both of the above.
With the implications this has, I want to start a campaign for YouTube to step in and do something about it, by modifying the algorithm or moderating it so far right extremist content doesn't get recommended as much as it does today at least. I also want to implore left-wing content creators to step up their game and create more short-form content or even YouTube Shorts, to be able to combat far right extremism on the platform.
For the campaign, I started the hashtags #YouTubePromotesFascism and #YouTubeLebensraum, the latter one is a reference to Nazi Germany’s Lebensraum, a Nazi protocol in Germany that forces to expand their territory and spread their ideology, and the way far right content expands on YouTube is similar to that of the Nazi Lebensraum.
We want YouTube to take action now, and we want to fight back against the far right expansion on social media.
What are the consequences of this?
The consequences of this sort of promotion and pushing of right-wing content on YouTube and other social media platforms is the danger of radicalization, which can lead to acts of terrorism or stochastic terrorism. This has been manifested numerous times, such as the infamous New Zealand Christchurch attack in 2019 or several white supremacist related attacks in the course of the last two decades.
There is no room for centrism here: the right-wing and the far right is an ideology of hate. It will exhacerbate hate crimes and terrorism as long as it is boosted by media, social media and other sorts of mass media communication.
This hasn’t changed
It is 2024, and in the wake of the EU Parliament election results, and the subsequent rise of far right parties in the EU, nothing has changed so far. YouTube and other social media platforms are openly pushing even more right-wing content to this day, and while we set this campaign on a hiatus due to inactivity and lack of visibility, now it should be a more relevant time to push this campaign back.
Social media and big tech corporations like YouTube and Google should be held accountable for pushing extremist right-wing content under everyone’s noses, and further radicalizing people into the far right.
Even then, YouTube and Google can lie about how they supposedly push content through the algorithm to the YouTube viewers given to the 2024 Google search source code leaks that happened recently. The same lies could be told by YouTube representatives regarding the standards of content recommendation like Google did.
Take action
We need to build up pressure on YouTube and their company to make the important change in the algorithm so right-wing content doesn’t get as promoted or recommended as it is now.
You can sign the petition above as a gesture that you’ll be joining the cause. This will most likely be presented to YouTube or to the public as a signal to the amount of support the campaign has received. You will also receive updates regarding the campaign by signing.
Tweet at @YouTube and @TeamYouTube now:
Another way to push back against this is by financially boycotting YouTube and Google, by not purchasing or spending money on YouTube Premium, Google Ads, or even using adblockers against Google and YouTube. Usually, platforms like YouTube are blocking adblockers under threat of account termination, but adblockers like uBlock Origin, Brave’s integrated adblock function and others are working further into workarounds against YouTube’s measures of blocking adblockers.
We’re also looking forward to seek legal counselling in case we can push for regulations either in the EU or elsewhere so an effective change can be made through government means. If you know about this or know anyone we could get counselling from, feel free to contact us at the Contact section in this website’s navigation above.
We will inform through our social media for any more information on what further actions can be taken.
