The Interconnected Nature of Online Harm and Moderation: Investigating the Cross-Platform Spread of Harmful Content between YouTube and Twitter

TL;DR

This study investigates how harmful content, especially moderated YouTube videos, spreads across Twitter, revealing that users sharing such content often endorse extreme ideologies, emphasizing the need for cross-platform moderation strategies.

Contribution

It provides large-scale empirical evidence of cross-platform harmful content spread and characterizes user behavior involved in sharing moderated videos across YouTube and Twitter.

Findings

Moderated YouTube videos are widely shared on Twitter.

Users sharing these videos often endorse extreme and conspiratorial ideologies.

Some users sharing harmful content are eventually suspended by Twitter.

Abstract

The proliferation of harmful content shared online poses a threat to online information integrity and the integrity of discussion across platforms. Despite various moderation interventions adopted by social media platforms, researchers and policymakers are calling for holistic solutions. This study explores how a target platform could leverage content that has been deemed harmful on a source platform by investigating the behavior and characteristics of Twitter users responsible for sharing moderated YouTube videos. Using a large-scale dataset of 600M tweets related to the 2020 U.S. election, we find that moderated Youtube videos are extensively shared on Twitter and that users who share these videos also endorse extreme and conspiratorial ideologies. A fraction of these users are eventually suspended by Twitter, but they do not appear to be involved in state-backed information operations. The findings of this study highlight the complex and interconnected nature of harmful cross-platform information diffusion, raising the need for cross-platform moderation strategies.