YouTube Search for 'Ruth Bader Ginsburg' Shows Conspiracy Theories

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the legendary Supreme Court Justice who is widely lauded for being a strong voice for progressive ideologies within the U.S. Supreme Court, an institution that has recently obtained a rather significant bias for the more conservative ideologies out there. YouTube has recently come under fire for the fact that when you enter the search query “RBG”, which is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nickname, you end up getting a list of conspiracy videos surrounding her rather than legitimate content that documents her actual achievements in the world.

YouTube has claimed to have been clearing up the problems in its algorithms that give rise to problems such as these, but that is clearly not the case. What’s worse is that their algorithm is thoroughly skewed, so if you happen to click on any of the conspiracy theory videos you are going to end up getting a lot more such videos in your recommendations.
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The problem with this is that it can potentially spread a great deal of misinformation about a very important person, and this misinformation could potentially have widespread effects in the real world. We have already seen how the spread of fake news on Facebook ended up having a negative impact on the world, so it is important that YouTube address this problem.

The primary problem with YouTube’s algorithm is that it approaches the task in a manner that is too mechanical. The fact of the matter is that the algorithm shoots for relevance rather than accuracy, and this can create a lot of problems such as the one that has been mentioned above. While YouTube has implemented some changes in order to ensure that we get accurate search results, it won’t make enough of a difference unless the video streaming platform changes up its algorithm a little.

YouTube searches for Ruth Bader Ginsburg led to slew of bogus conspiracy videos
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