Ruth Bader Ginsburg hoax videos flood YouTube

YouTubeFalse videos centered around US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have taken over YouTube’s search bar.  According to The Washington Post, when searching for RBG, more than half of the results were conspiracy or far-right videos about the justice, with most containing false information regarding the status of her overall health. Ginsburg’s health has been in the spotlight since she suffered a fall in November of last year, and recently gained more coverage when she had cancerous tumors removed from her lungs in December.

The report states that most of the hoax videos originated because of the fringe movement, QAnon. The QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory, claiming there is a secret deep state that is acting against Donald Trump and his supporters. Some of the videos claimed Ginsburg’s doctors were using illegal drugs to keep her alive through her recent health issues. Ginsburg is currently away from her post at the Supreme Court as she recovers from cancer treatment but has told the public she is doing well.

Of all the top search results for RBG, only one video was from a credible news source, CNN. The Post explains that YouTube’s algorithm automatically labeled the conspiracy videos as more important than factual videos. The resulting videos most likely showed up because they were “probably new, popular or suitable to the search.” The Washington Post then contacted the site to inform them of the false videos, prompting YouTube to attempt to rectify the situation by adding videos from reputable sources.

This is not the first time YouTube has run into problems with conspiracy videos. The website, which is owned by Google, has changed its algorithm multiple times in the past few years to better combat the prevalence of fake stories. YouTube employs an armada of human content moderators to search and flag these videos, but they can’t seem to keep up with the 450 hours of video uploaded to the platform every minute.

Array