YouTube Disinformation
- Introduction
- Trends
- Platforms
- Removals
- Conclusion
- Appendix
This report looks at the activity of 398 different radical YouTube channels during the period of the 1st of February till the 31st of May 2021.
Great Reset/Global Elite
Higher Conciousness
Biblical Times
Great Reset/Global Elite
Higher Conciousness
Biblical Times
These graphs show the discussion around some of the most popular theories, such as the great reset, higher consciousness, and biblical times over the last year. Notably, views for higher consciousness and biblical times varied drastically while video mentions remained stable, especially during the capitol riots.
Analysis
The newest iteration of misinformation regarding the pandemic and COVID-19 is the notion that the waves of social, civil and policy changes such as the vaccine roll-out are part of a secret global re-organization plan, which is referred to as "the great reset" Videos that suspect a conspiracy of "the great reset" have, for example, included a close analysis of the proceedings of the G7 summit as the kind of "working behind closed doors” that indicate sinister machinations to manipulate the public for corporate and government interests.
“The great reset” is a theory reacting to broader socio-cultural, economic, and political changes due to the pandemic, purporting that a group of global elite has coordinated a series of events, including the COVID virus and related policies for personal gains.
Earlier iterations of this theory can be traced to the concept of the "new world order" or other versions of a secret elite shadow organization conducting world affairs, i.e. the Illuminati. Our research links this theory to a broader suspicion of the “global elite" and “globalism” which is viewed as nefarious international coordination, often leading to condemnation of organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
In the discourse on the “great reset,” there are those that speculate that Bill Gates is one of the corporate elite that has interests invested in the plan of a "great reset." One argument is that because "there is no returning to normal," there is proof of pre-meditated plans for such changes for the gain of those in power. In other words, video creators will cite any widespread and profound changes in ways of life from pre-pandemic times as evidence of a secret coordinated plan to re-organize world affairs.
The "great reset" theory is part of a longer trend of misinformation about COVID about its scale, origin, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. Various theories have suggested that it is a bioweapon to control the population, a form of espionage, or an effect of 5G mobile networks. Related to this are the theories that the vaccine roll-out is also an effort to insert micro-tracking chips to control the population. Many of these videos use the idea that the "elite" or "new world order" use fear to control and manipulate the population.
Many of these channels pander to an emerging spirituality common among radical, right-wing misinformation communities that frequently call upon viewers to appeal to their "higher consciousness." This "higher consciousness" is a version of themselves that can see beyond what is an artificial reality, echoing the science fiction film The Matrix. This iteration of spirituality appeals to generic values such as love, trust and "truth". In addition, videos often cite "ancient" sources of spirituality, such as the Gnostics or other vague references to pre-modern religions and mythologies.
This idea of consciousness and spirituality works alongside traditional Christian ideologies, with references to the devil, bible verses, and the second coming of Jesus often more commonly evoked in comment sections. For example, a popular group of videos speculates about the connection between natural disasters such as volcano eruptions, flash floods, and cyclones as evidence of “biblical times.” These videos often connect Christianity with news coverage of meteors, UFOs, and unexplained sonic booms in various parts of the world as well as new scientific discoveries about quantum physics. Commenters attribute these events to both extra-terrestrial origins as well as demonic or satanic origins interchangeably. The claim that "we are living in biblical times" was popular in the early part of the pandemic and peaked in popularity in the lead up to the 2020 election amid Trump supporters.
Methodology
This is video views over time related to the theory of the “great reset”, “higher consciousnes” and “biblical times.”
When searching for discourse around the “great reset” and the broader discussions of a “global elite” we tracked mentions of a “new normal”,“globalism”, “build back better” and“g7”. We also searched for mentions of “Bill Gates”, “Epstein” and “billionaire.“ Other related conspiracies include mentions of an “elite pedophile ring”, “bilderberg”, “soros” and “new world order.”
For the communities discussing the emerging spirituality and focus on a “higher consciousness” we tracked mentions “spiritual warfare” and “spiritual awakening.” Video creators warn viewers to look “beyond the veil,” in order to see past the “matrix” or “simulation.” Parts of this spirituality that we included in our search included any mentions of “vibrations”, “raising vibrations”, or “manifestations.”
Within the community warning of the “biblical times,” we tracked the discourse where video creators claim that “Jesus is coming” or “has risen” and we are in the “end times” or“end of days.”
Many YouTube channels are flocking to other networks. We looked at the video descriptions and extracted which other platforms they are pointing to.
twitch
5.58%twitch
7.55%twitch
7.64%twitch
7.69%gab
40.61%gab
32.70%gab
58.33%gab
51.75%parler
32.49%parler
44.03%parler
38.89%parler
33.57%rumble
3.05%rumble
12.58%rumble
20.14%rumble
23.08%bitchute
38.58%bitchute
28.30%bitchute
25.00%bitchute
23.08%odysee
0.00%odysee
2.52%odysee
4.17%odysee
12.59%locals
2.54%locals
1.26%locals
1.39%locals
6.29%dlive
10.66%dlive
7.55%dlive
6.94%dlive
5.59%brighteon
3.55%brighteon
3.14%brighteon
2.08%brighteon
4.20%lbry
4.57%lbry
3.77%lbry
2.78%lbry
3.50%trovo
0.51%trovo
0.00%trovo
1.39%trovo
1.40%ugetube
0.00%ugetube
0.63%ugetube
1.39%ugetube
1.40%Analysis
The popularity of main stream platforms remained consistent over the year. Slightly less channels seem to be active on Twitter and Facebook. The popularity of Instagram and Twitch is slightly increasing. In the alt-tech space Gab and Parler are the two most dominant players. Less channels we're mentioning Parler after the platform got suspended from AWS in January 2021. Video sharing platform Bitchute seems to be losing territory to video platforms such as Rumble and Odysee.
Locals, a social media platform started by YouTuber Dave Rubin, has been slowly gaining more traction over the year. The branding that this platform uses looks more mainstream and startup-like than platforms such as Bitchute, UGETube and Rumble.
Methodology
These metrics have been calculated by looking at the video descriptions of 393 QAnon, conspiracy, alt-right and antivax channels on YouTube. For the calculations we used the sum of all the channels that mentioned at least one platform in their descriptions during the timespan of a month (total platform mentions). These numbers differ per month, but roughly around half of the channels mentioned those platforms in their description. We then aggregated all the mentions of these specific channels in a month and divided them through total platform mentions. One limitation of our methodology is that we focused on the mention of a platform rather than the url containing a platform reference. We will build on this for our next publication.
Our preliminary research has confirmed a pattern of creators removing their own videos that is distinct from content that has been removed due to YouTube’s moderation policies.
These videos are still able to garner significant engagement and views before they are removed. In the case of one channel, videos they removed after just three days were more successful than any other of that channel’s videos in the month. However, the majority of videos we saw removed in the past three months were taken down by YouTube. Many of the videos removed by creators or by YouTube discussed themes from the QAnon conspiracy or anti-vaccination content.
Since March, we tracked 403 video removals from 48 different channels, most of these concentrated in March and April. For almost every channel, removed videos were much more popular than videos that were still live. On average, removed videos received more than 11 times as many views as other videos for any given channel. This suggests that YouTube’s moderation efforts fail to catch problematic content before it goes viral, and that content creators gain much more attention from content that might violate YouTube’s guidelines.
Numbers
Stats
Conclusion
As many of these earlier channels and videos that mention these theories have been removed by YouTube, in efforts towards moderation of Qanon related content, our research will seek to track the emergence of similar content that is able to appear despite YouTube’s growing moderation policies and algorithms. Our research also seeks to understand how the theories we’ve found to be of interest— “great reset,” “higher consciousness” and “biblical times”— cross-relate within conspiracy, Qanon and alt-right, anti-vax and marxist communities. The data we collect on removed videos will help to understand how content may transform or shift in response to ongoing moderation and removal policies. Future research goals include visualizing the broader ecosystem of misinformation outside of YouTube and how it spreads on social platforms outside of YouTube.
Appendix and Further Discussion
Topic graphs
The full list of search terms used for each of the themes is shown below:
- Global Elite: “great reset”, “new normal”, “build back better”, “g7”, “Bill Gates”, “Epstein”, “billionaire”, “elite pedophile ring”, “billionaires” , “bilderberg”, “global elite”, “soros”, “new world order”, “globalism”
- Higher Consciousness: “spiritual warfare”, “consciousness”, “higher consciousness”, “beyond the veil”, “behind the veil”, “behind a veil”, “matrix”, “simulation”, “spiritual awakening”, “vibration”, “manifestation”, “raising vibration”, “intent”, “manifest”
- Biblical Times: “jesus is coming”, “end time”, “end times”, “end of days”, “end of times”, “second coming”, “has risen”, “revelation”, “revelations”
The graphs were generated using videos from all tracked channels, not limited to specific categories of content. We simply looked for the occurrence of these phrases, not the context in which they were used. Despite casting an overly broad net, we feel this is still a good measure of the popularity of certain discussion terms. We are investigating methods for recognizing topics and discussions without manual analysis.
Removal
For removal, we specifically looked at the alt-right, conspiracy, Qanon, alt-health, and spirituality focused channels. As mentioned above, some videos have been removed by the site and some by the creators themselves. While we found removed videos to be consistently more popular than their still-live counterparts, we currently have little data on why the videos were removed in the first place. YouTube’s lack of transparency around moderation was one of our major motivations for starting this project. As such, future reports will investigate to what extent removal is used by creators to avoid moderation and how quickly YouTube responds to problematic content.
Offsite links
Our current methodology simply checks for the existence of these social media links. Some video descriptions will link to other social media posts outside of referencing a creator’s alternative profile. However, from manual checking we’ve found the vast majority of these links are creators promoting their profiles on alternative sites. Many creators also use url shorteners or aggregators like bitly or linktree to obfuscate detection and avoid censorship. Future analysis will seek to follow these links to other sites as well.
Community classification
We built our list of channels from some academic papers (https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08313 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211) and manually searched for other related channels. Our classification comes from manual review or the determination of the papers we found. We are adding automatic discovery of channels, and plan on using an implementation of the methods in this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.09892) for automatic tagging/classification of newly discovered channels. For a full list of channels please contact us at info@raditube.com.