Analysis uncovers biases in YouTube's search algorithm favoring legacy media and public service media, highlighting the need for better data access.
This chapter examines YouTube’s content moderation practices during the 2024 European Parliamentary elections. Using search results from the Netherlands, Germany, and France, plus an API sample, it explores YouTube’s pledge to raise authoritative sources and remove harmful content. Findings suggest the search algorithm favors legacy media and Public Service Media (PSM). While many PSM carry a publisher context label, deployment seems patchy and absent in European languages such as Basque, Catalan, Danish, Finnish, Galician, Greek, and Portuguese. The study logs 486 election videos that became unavailable. However, sparse information problematizes assessing the enforcement of Terms of Service. The chapter concludes with a call for increased data access via the YouTube Research Program to scale content moderation studies on the platform.
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Jurg et al. (2025) studied this question.
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