对比美南两国，发现YouTube搜索算法在南非更易推送新冠谣言。
Algorithmic Behaviors Across Regions: A Geolocation Audit of YouTube Search for COVID-19 Misinformation Between the United States and South Africa
- 用机器人模拟用户，在两国各3地搜48个关键词10天。
- 前10条结果中31.55%含新冠谣言，南非比美国更严重。
- 揭示平台算法区域差异，警示全球内容治理不均。
尽管在线健康信息搜索工具，YouTube却因传播全球范围的新冠谣言而受到批评。然而，以往审计研究主要聚焦于全球北方地区，常忽视全球南方。为弥补这一空白，我们开展了一项为期10天的地理定位审计，比较美国（US）与南非（SA）两国在新冠疫情中的新冠谣言搜索结果分布情况。两国各选取3个地理位置，部署模拟真实用户的机器人（即“傀儡”），针对48个搜索词，在4种搜索排序条件下持续收集数据，共生成91.5万条结果。分析显示，前10条搜索结果中31.55%包含新冠谣言。其中，南非机器人的搜索结果显著更多地包含误导性内容，远超美国同等情况。本研究揭示了YouTube搜索算法在不同国家间存在明显差异，强调平台需在全球范围内统一监管其算法行为。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Despite being an integral tool for finding health-related information online, YouTube has faced criticism for disseminating COVID-19 misinformation globally to its users. Yet, prior audit studies have predominantly investigated YouTube within the Global North contexts, often overlooking the Global South. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive 10-day geolocation-based audit on YouTube to compare the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation in search results between the United States (US) and South Africa (SA), the countries heavily affected by the pandemic in the Global North and the Global South, respectively. For each country, we selected 3 geolocations and placed sock-puppets, or bots emulating "real" users, that collected search results for 48 search queries sorted by 4 search filters for 10 days, yielding a dataset of 915K results. We found that 31.55% of the top-10 search results contained COVID-19 misinformation. Among the top-10 search results, bots in SA faced significantly more misinformative search results than their US counterparts. Overall, our study highlights the contrasting algorithmic behaviors of YouTube search between two countries, underscoring the need for the platform to regulate algorithmic behavior consistently across different regions of the Globe.
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