This research documents how YouTube’s algorithms contribute to promoting misogynistic, anti-feminist and other extremist content to Australian boys and young men. 

This short-term, qualitative study involved analysing algorithmic recommendations and trajectories provided to 10 experimental accounts. As the study progressed, each account was recommended videos with messages antagonistic towards women and feminism. Following the recommendations resulted in more overtly misogynist content being recommended.

The study found that while the general Youtube interface recommended broadly similar content to topics the accounts originally engaged with, the new shorter video feature, called YouTube Shorts, appears to operate differently. Shorts seems to optimise more aggressively in response to user behaviour and show more extreme videos within a relatively brief timeframe. The algorithm did not make any distinction between the underage and adult accounts in terms of the content served.

Key recommendations

• Focus on community and societal risks, not only individual risks, and expand the definition of ‘online harms’ to address gender-based violence.
• Regulate systems and processes, not only content moderation.
• Platform accountability and transparency: design regulation in a way that can compel platforms to demonstrate that their policies, processes and systems are designed and implemented with respect to the online harms.
• Strong regulators and enforced regulation: move away from self- and co-regulation and resource the joining up of regulators.