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YouTube has managed to stop its algorithm serving up extreme videos

YouTube's recommendation algorithm previously pushed users towards viewing ever more extreme videos, but now it steers people away from such content

By Chris Stokel-Walker

27 February 2024

A range of videos are available on YouTube

LightField Studios Inc. / Alamy

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm no longer inadvertently sends people down a rabbit hole of extreme political content, researchers have found. Following changes to the algorithm in 2019, individual choice plays a larger role in whether people are exposed to such material.

Manoel Horta Ribeiro at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues used two types of bot to replicate how people interact with YouTube. “We came up with this idea of finding a way to disentangle the effects…

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