Winter Olympics and YouTube videos are full of propaganda

For sports fans who log into YouTube to watch content on Winter Olympics in Beijing Promotional videos are provided. YouTube search results were analyzed by wired uk Found that users who type “Beijing”, “Beijing 2022”, “Olympices” or “Olympics 2022” are shown Professional anti-advertising videosChina Among the first results. Five of the major teaser videos, which often appear over highlights at the Olympics, have garnered nearly 900,000 views.

Two anti-China videos featured prominently in the platform’s search results and were published by a group called The Bl (Beauty of Life)which Facebook has previously linked to Falun GongIt is a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the country’s Communist Party in 1999 and has been protesting against the regime ever since. The channel’s videos compete for views with their pro-China content Western YouTube His work was previously promoted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Similar search results were visible in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. wired uk It also found evidence that pro-China video viewing numbers were inflated through the use of fake news sites.

A flurry of propaganda videos was spotted earlier this month by John Scott Railton, a researcher at Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto’s research laboratory. On February 5, 2022 Scott Railton discovered that after watching videos of skateboarding and curling, YouTube automatically played a video from a pro-China account. “From skateboarding and ball videos, I found myself the target of increasingly targeted propagandaScott Railton said. February 11, when wired uk He did his analysis, these videos no longer appear in YouTube autoplay. But the way similar videos continue to dominate search results points to YouTube You run the risk of these campaigns dominating Olympic content published on the platform.

YouTube did not respond to a request for comment about why content used as propaganda to promote or ridicule China was pushed to the top of search results for the Olympics, or whether its videos had You violated the Terms of Service for the platform using fake sites for inflate opinions.

The role of YouTubers

A recurring theme in pro-China propaganda videos is resolution for 2019 by Eileen Joe, a US-born skater, to compete for China in the Winter Olympics. Video titledThe failure of the US boycott … Elaine Jo wins the gold medal! Beijing 2022 Olympics(“US boycott fails, Elaine Jo wins medal”) by YouTuber Jason Lightfoot was the first search result for the term Beijing”, with 54,000 views (currently the video has exceeded 91,000 views, editor).

The United States and Canada are among the countries that participated in Diplomatic boycott Winter Olympics in Beijing. In Canada, the same video of Jason Lightfoot appeared for users searching for “the 2022 Olympics” and “Winter Olympics”, albeit much lower, at 26th and 33rd, respectively. Lightfoot says in the video Western media “They can’t stand what Ellen Jo stands for […] Someone chose China over the American dream“.