YouTube search results for “RBG” on Jan. 8. (YouTube/YouTube)Conspiracy theories about the health of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have dominated YouTube this week, illustrating how the world’s most popular video site is failing to prevent its algorithm from helping popularize viral hoaxes and misinformation. The algorithm rewarded the conspiracy videos over reliable news based on what it calculated was their “relevance,” signaling that the videos were probably new, popular or suitable to the search. By Thursday, a day after YouTube was contacted by The Washington Post, searches for “RBG” also surfaced multiple videos from mainstream news organizations. Followers of “Q” then posted videos on YouTube that explicitly cited the hoax or read its text to viewers in full.

Source: Washington Post January 11, 2019 18:09 UTC