YouTube’s recommender drives up to 70 percent of content watched.

Evidence

Caleb didn’t fall into the echo chamber by accident: he received a ‘recommendation’ from YouTube. Like other social media companies, YouTube makes money from advertisements on their platform, so their main concern is to maximize engagement – that is, having users watch more and more videos. Their proprietary artificial intelligence algorithm is tweaked frequently and reported to be responsible for as much as 70 per cent of watched content. The algorithm is based, in part, on prior user behaviour as well as viewing times. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 401

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Researchers tracked 900 users’ viewing to match YouTube recommendations with actual choices — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 410

Broader Connections

• Researchers tracked 900 users’ viewing to match YouTube recommendations with actual choices #corroborates (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 410