YouTube's recommendations still push harmful videos, crowdsourced study finds

YouTube's recommendation algorithm suggests videos with misinformation, violence, hate speech, and other content that violates its own policies, researchers say. A new crowdsourced investigation from the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind the Firefox web browser, asked more than 37,000 YouTube users to act as watchdogs and report harmful content through a browser extension that was then analyzed by research assistants at the University of Exeter. That user-supplied content included Covid-19 misinformation, political conspiracy theories, and both violent and graphic content, including sexual content that appeared to be cartoons for children, the analysis found.