New research finds policies implemented by YouTube to prevent the spread of hoax news have a significant impact on the number of misinformation videos on the Facebook and Twitter platforms.
The findings come from a report by a team of researchers from the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University.
During the U.S. election on November 3, 2020, researchers noted a dramatic increase in the number of hoax videos on YouTube shared on Twitter. In the same month the video represented about a third of all election -related videos shared on the platform
Then, on December 8, 2020, a month after the U.S. election, YouTube said it would remove videos accusing it of election fraud and manipulation of election results. There has been a dramatic decline in misleading election claims on Twitter.
During that time, the ratio of election -related misinformation videos shared on Twitter from YouTube dropped to below 20%.
The ratio dropped again after the U.S. Capitol riots when YouTube said it would block any channel that spread false information about election results.
At the time U.S. President Joe Biden took the oath of office on January 20, 2021, only about 5% of all election fraud videos on Twitter came from YouTube. Researchers see a similar trend happening on Facebook.
Prior to YouTube's policy decision on December 8, 2020, about 18% of all videos shared on the platform were related to false election theories. By the day of the US President’s inauguration, that number had dropped to 4%.
To compile their findings, the team at New York University collected a random sample of 10% of all tweets each day and then isolated those linked to YouTube videos. They did the same on Facebook using the company's CrowdTangle tool.
These findings highlight the large role YouTube plays in how information is shared today. As the most common video platform on the internet, YouTube has tremendous power to shape political opinion. The policy can be very detrimental as well as good.
"This is a big part of the information ecosystem. As the YouTube platform gets healthier, so do others," Megan Brown, a researcher at the Center for Social Media and Politics told The Times.