Algorithmic Behaviors Across Regions: A Geolocation Audit of YouTube Search for COVID-19 Misinformation Between the United States and South Africa

TL;DR

This study compares COVID-19 misinformation in YouTube search results between the US and South Africa, revealing regional differences and highlighting the need for consistent platform regulation worldwide.

Contribution

It provides a geolocation-based audit of YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation prevalence, focusing on underrepresented Global South regions.

Findings

31.55% of top search results contained misinformation

South Africa faced significantly more misinformative results than the US

YouTube's algorithmic behavior varies notably between regions

Abstract

Despite being an integral tool for finding health-related information online, YouTube has faced criticism for disseminating COVID-19 misinformation globally to its users. Yet, prior audit studies have predominantly investigated YouTube within the Global North contexts, often overlooking the Global South. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive 10-day geolocation-based audit on YouTube to compare the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation in search results between the United States (US) and South Africa (SA), the countries heavily affected by the pandemic in the Global North and the Global South, respectively. For each country, we selected 3 geolocations and placed sock-puppets, or bots emulating "real" users, that collected search results for 48 search queries sorted by 4 search filters for 10 days, yielding a dataset of 915K results. We found that 31.55% of the top-10 search results contained COVID-19 misinformation. Among the top-10 search results, bots in SA faced significantly more misinformative search results than their US counterparts. Overall, our study highlights the contrasting algorithmic behaviors of YouTube search between two countries, underscoring the need for the platform to regulate algorithmic behavior consistently across different regions of the Globe.