Sports fans are searching for highlights from the Beijing Winter Olympics, YouTube's search engine is serving them a flurry of political propaganda instead. 😳
Sports fans who tuned in to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics on YouTube are instead being served propaganda videos. An analysis of YouTube search results by WIRED found that people who typed “Beijing,” “Beijing 2022,” “Olympics,” or “Olympics 2022” were shown pro-China and anti-China propaganda videos in the top results. Five of the most prominent propaganda videos, which often appear above actual Olympics highlights, have amassed almost 900,000 views.
Two anti-China videos showing up in search results were published by a group called The BL , which Facebook previouslyto the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 and has protested against the regime ever since. They jostled for views with pro-China videos posted by Western YouTubers whose work has previously been promoted by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Similar search results were visible in the US, Canada, and the UK.
This flurry of propaganda videos was first spotted earlier this month by John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s research laboratory, Citizen Lab. On February 5, Scott-Railtonafter he’d watched skating and curling videos, YouTube automatically played a video by a pro-China YouTube account. “I found myself on a slippery slide from skating and curling into increasingly targeted propaganda,” he says.
YouTube did not respond to a request to comment on why content used as propaganda to promote or deride China was being pushed to the top of Olympics search results, nor did the company say if those behind the videos had violated its terms of service by using fake websites to inflate their views.
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