Publication detail

Black-box Audit of YouTube's Video Recommendation: Investigation of Misinformation Filter Bubble Dynamics

TOMLEIN, M. PECHER, B. ŠIMKO, J. SRBA, I. MÓRO, R. ŠTEFANCOVÁ, E. KOMPAN, M. HRČKOVÁ, A. PODROUŽEK, J. BIELIKOVÁ, M.

Original Title

Black-box Audit of YouTube's Video Recommendation: Investigation of Misinformation Filter Bubble Dynamics

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

We investigated the creation and bursting dynamics of misinformation filter bubbles on YouTube using a black-box sockpuppeting audit technique. In this study, pre-programmed agents acting as YouTube users stimulated YouTube's recommender systems: they first watched a series of misinformation promoting videos (bubble creation) and then a series of misinformation debunking videos (bubble bursting). Meanwhile, agents recorded videos recommended to them by YouTube. After manually annotating these recommendations, we were able to quantify the portion of misinformative videos among them. The results confirm the creation of filter bubbles (albeit not in all situations) and show that these bubbles can be bursted by watching credible content. Drawing a direct comparison with a previous study, we do not see improvements in overall quantities of misinformation recommended.

Keywords

Black boxes, Bubble bursting, Bubble dynamics, Extended abstracts, YouTube

Authors

TOMLEIN, M.; PECHER, B.; ŠIMKO, J.; SRBA, I.; MÓRO, R.; ŠTEFANCOVÁ, E.; KOMPAN, M.; HRČKOVÁ, A.; PODROUŽEK, J.; BIELIKOVÁ, M.

Released

28. 7. 2022

Publisher

International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence

Location

Vienna

ISBN

978-1-956792-00-3

Book

Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Sister Conferences Best Papers

Pages from

5349

Pages to

5353

Pages count

5

URL

https://www.ijcai.org/proceedings/2022/749

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT180393,
  author="TOMLEIN, M. and PECHER, B. and ŠIMKO, J. and SRBA, I. and MÓRO, R. and ŠTEFANCOVÁ, E. and KOMPAN, M. and HRČKOVÁ, A. and PODROUŽEK, J. and BIELIKOVÁ, M.",
  title="Black-box Audit of YouTube's Video Recommendation: Investigation of Misinformation Filter Bubble Dynamics",
  booktitle="Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Sister Conferences Best Papers",
  year="2022",
  pages="5349--5353",
  publisher="International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence",
  address="Vienna",
  doi="10.24963/ijcai.2022/749",
  isbn="978-1-956792-00-3",
  url="https://www.ijcai.org/proceedings/2022/749"
}