Third-Person Perceptions and Calls for Censorship of Flat Earth Videos on YouTube

Calls for censorship have been made in response to the proliferation of flat Earth videos on YouTube, but these videos are likely convincing to very few. Instead, people may worry these videos are brainwashing others. That individuals believe other people will be more influenced by media messages than themselves is called third-person perception (TPP), and the consequences from those perceptions, such as calls for censorship, are called third-person effects (TPE). Here, we conduct three studies that examine the flat Earth phenomenon using TPP and TPE as a theoretical framework. We first measured participants’ own perceptions of the convincingness of flat Earth arguments presented in YouTube videos and compared these to participants’ perceptions of how convincing others might find the arguments. Instead of merely looking at ratings of one’s self vs. a general ‘other,’ however, we asked people to consider a variety of identity groups who differ based on political party, religiosity, educational attainment, and area of residence (e.g., rural, urban). We found that participants’ religiosity and political party were the strongest predictors of TPP across the different identity groups. In our second and third pre-registered studies, we found support for our first study’s conclusions, and we found mixed evidence for whether TPP predict support for censoring YouTube among the public

Conspiracy Theories and Flat-Earth Videos on YouTube

The advent of digital user-created media platforms such as YouTube has made possible the spread of a wide range of information without the constraints of traditional mass media such as editorial gatekeeping. This democratized user-created media environment provides an outlet for subject matter that would otherwise not receive broad exposure–including material that seeks to discredit specific scientific findings and science as a whole. The present paper examines YouTube videos that advocate the idea of a flat earth and tests for conspiratorial ideation using a version of the Conspiratorial Mentality Questionnaire (Bruder, Haffke, Neave, Nouripanah, & Imhoff, 2013). The research finds that flat-earth videos significantly outnumbered debunking videos, were almost twice as long on average and were more likely to include conspiracy ideation, science denial and religious thought and to reference other social media. On the other hand, debunking videos were more likely to reference established science and enjoyed greater favorability ratings from viewers

"It is just a flu": {A}ssessing the Effect of Watch History on {YouTube}'s Pseudoscientific Video Recommendations

YouTube has revolutionized the way people discover and consume videos, becoming one of the primary news sources for Internet users. Since content on YouTube is generated by its users, the platform is particularly vulnerable to misinformative and conspiratorial videos. Even worse, the role played by YouTube's recommendation algorithm in unwittingly promoting questionable content is not well understood, and could potentially make the problem even worse. This can have dire real-world consequences, especially when pseudoscientific content is promoted to users at critical times, e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we set out to characterize and detect pseudoscientific misinformation on YouTube. We collect 6.6K videos related to COVID-19, the flat earth theory, the anti-vaccination, and anti-mask movements; using crowdsourcing, we annotate them as pseudoscience, legitimate science, or irrelevant. We then train a deep learning classifier to detect pseudoscientific videos with an accuracy of 76.1%. Next, we quantify user exposure to this content on various parts of the platform (i.e., a user's homepage, recommended videos while watching a specific video, or search results) and how this exposure changes based on the user's watch history. We find that YouTube's recommendation algorithm is more aggressive in suggesting pseudoscientific content when users are searching for specific topics, while these recommendations are less common on a user's homepage or when actively watching pseudoscientific videos. Finally, we shed light on how a user's watch history substantially affects the type of recommended videos

Reconstruction of earth fissures 3-D from videos

Earth fissures are pervasive cracks that develop on valley floors as a consequence of land subsidence associated with extensive groundwater withdrawal. To capture geometrical, geological and geotechnical information of ground fissures is of paramount importance for their characterization. Recent advances in remote sensing techniques and the accessibility to remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) as well as the evolution of onboard digital cameras enable the capture of digital photos and videos. Using digital photos along with the Structure from Motion (SfM) technique and following certain strategies, we can reconstruct a 3-D model of the earth fissures under study. This technique requires digital photos, but when a digital video is available, we can convert it into a set of frames and equally apply the procedure. Besides, the extraction of frames from a video assures a key condition for the SfM technique: the overlap between photos. The resulting 3-D model should be scaled and oriented using a rigid transformation matrix or even better including ground control points (GCP) into the captured photos or frames. The latter enables the geo-referencing of the point cloud and the correction of linear and non-linear deformations. In this work, the proposed methodology is illustrated through the application of SfM technique to a high-resolution video downloaded from YouTube (i.e. https://youtu.be/9xdAnftBKvY, last access: 20 February 2020). The video shows a mile-long earth fissure that appeared sometime between March 2014 and December 2014 near the Tator Hills (Arizona, USA) over Quaternary sediments. The Arizona Geological Survey captured these videos using an RPAS. The frames of the video were downloaded and extracted using a simple Matlab code. Then, we sub-sampled the frames and processed them using the software Agisoft Metashape Professional. Finally, we got metric data from Google Earth and generated a 3-D model. The quality of the 3-D model strongly depends on the quality of the photos and the GCP. However, this study shows the potential of this technique, instrumentation and data available on Internet for the development of 3-D point clouds and 3-D models for the detailed analysis of earth fissures.This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the European Funds for Regional Development (FEDER) (grant no. TEC2017-85244-C2-1-P), the UNESCO (grant no. ICGP641 project), the Universidad de Alicante (grant no. GRE17-11), the Universidad de Alicante (grant no. GRE18-15), and the Universidad de Alicante (grant no. vigrob-157)

The Conspiracy Money Machine: Uncovering Telegram's Conspiracy Channels and their Profit Model

In recent years, major social media platforms have implemented increasingly strict moderation policies, resulting in bans and restrictions on conspiracy theory-related content. To circumvent these restrictions, conspiracy theorists are turning to alternatives, such as Telegram, where they can express and spread their views with fewer limitations. Telegram offers channels -- virtual rooms where only administrators can broadcast messages -- and a more permissive content policy. These features have created the perfect breeding ground for a complex ecosystem of conspiracy channels. In this paper, we illuminate this ecosystem. First, we propose an approach to detect conspiracy channels. Then, we discover that conspiracy channels can be clustered into four distinct communities comprising over 17,000 channels. Finally, we uncover the "Conspiracy Money Machine," revealing how most conspiracy channels actively seek to profit from their subscribers. We find conspiracy theorists leverage e-commerce platforms to sell questionable products or lucratively promote them through affiliate links. Moreover, we observe that conspiracy channels use donation and crowdfunding platforms to raise funds for their campaigns. We determine that this business involves hundreds of donors and generates a turnover of over $90 million

A Mongolian horsepacking adventure through my paranoid poetics of digital ontology

This is not quite an essay. It is more of a scientific experiment conducted with words. It titrates the paranoid poetics of critique with the narrative practices of social media to precipitate a postcritical theory of digital ontology. The organic compounds used in this titration were extracted from a 16-month mine of ethnography among digitalreal tourists known as Dimecams. This ethnographic mine was full of participant-observations among the “digital” and “real” aggregates of horsepacking adventures in Mongolia. Starting with myths of Mongolian adventures that circulate in the backpacker communities of Asia, this experiment rewires the narrative circuits of exploration to illuminate two distinct iterations of adventure—the “real” and the “digital.” Common sense would have it that digital adventures appearing on social media are “representations” of real adventures from the flesh. The experiments I conducted, however, demonstrated that the digital and the real are actually two separate ontologies in which different types of adventures occur. Real adventures are full of misery and hunger while digital adventures are nothing but epic selfies and unhinged freedom. The radical alterity between these two kinds of adventures necessitated a turn towards ontology. However, in this ontological turn, my experiment spun out of control and crystallized as a fractal. That fractal was later revealed to be a continuously self-referential postcritique of the paranoid poetics of critique. The same fractal was also shown to be the operational procedure which kept the narrative ontology of digital adventures afloat in a self-sustaining world that endlessly retold itself into existence. What emerged at the end of this experiment was a not-quite-ontology composed of not-quite-beings—which, in the not-too-distant future, will detach itself from reality entirely, drifting off into space and forming a new planetAnthropolog

Towards more balanced news access? A study on the impact of cost-cutting and Web 2.0 on the mediated public sphere

In order to assess the impact of cost-cutting and digitalization on the expansion or contraction of the mediated public sphere, we developed a quantitative and longitudinal content analysis focused on sourcing practices for foreign news reporting in four Belgian newspapers (1995-2010). The results show little to no shift in the news access of different types of sources. Political sources dominate foreign news output, but ordinary citizens also play a significant role. Although it becomes clear that Belgian journalists often do not explicitly mention their use of news agency copy, recycled news articles or PR material, our findings indicate that concerns about cost-cutting in newsrooms or sanguinity about the democratic potential of Web 2.0 seem fairly exaggerated, at least in the Belgian context