YouTube's Algorithm Keeps Suggesting Home Videos Of Kids To Pedophiles
SANTA CLARA (KPIX 5) — YouTube is coming under fire following a new report that says the site's recommendation algorithm suggests home videos featuring children to pedophiles.
Harvard researcher Jonas Kaiser was researching the effects of YouTube on Brazilian society when he made the disturbing discovery.
"50 or so channels that had basically content that was all sexual in nature or sexualized, some of them over age, some of them definitely underage. And from there, we then looked at YouTube's recommendations from these channels and basically stumbled into this world of child exploitation videos," Kaiser explained.
For example, an innocent home video titled "Miranda Racing At Swim Meet 5 Years Old" from 2009, which only had a few dozen views at first, suddenly blew up and gathered over 121,000 views.
"And then suddenly, a video with like 250,000 views. Where the only real difference with this video with more views was the child had less clothing on," Kaiser said. "Some of these videos were picked out for whichever reason and then recommended through the algorithm."
"This just shines a spotlight on how algorithms work, that they will just keep showing people what they want to see. In this case, it caters to pedophiles," Kaiser said.
Kaiser's research was featured in the New York Times with the headline "On YouTube's Digital Playground, An Open Gate For Pedophiles."