Kevin Munger and his colleague Joseph Phillips, both from Penn State, recently published new research that concerns YouTube, the far-right, and the common belief — which they challenge head-on — that YouTube’s algorithm for recommending videos can show potentially unsuspecting viewers more and more extreme content, and therefore lead to potentially dangerous real-life actions and consequences.

The phenomenon of how social media, hate, and criminal violence all intersect and interact is still widely misunderstood, but Kevin and Joseph are making some important and provocative contributions to the discourse here. If you do a quick Google search on “YouTube fair right radicalization” and you’ll see an almost unlimited number of search results of news articles that reaffirm the theory that YouTube’s unique recommendation algorithm is responsible for radicalizing innocent people, especially young people, which has really troubling implications for YouTube’s entire business model.

What Kevin and Joseph’s research surfaced was maybe something even more troubling — that the far-right voices online may not be creating radicals, but they may be finding them, building a community for them, and activating them.

Referenced in this episode:

“Maybe It’s Not YouTube’s Algorithm That Radicalizes People.” Wired.com, October 23, 2019.

“Study: YouTube's Fringe Video Viewers Aren't Passive Zombies.” Reason.com, October 24, 2019.

"Donald Trump Jr walks out of Triggered book launch after heckling – from supporters." The Guardian, November 10, 2019.