In the image above, each YouTube channel is represented by an individual circle placed so that channels with mutual recommendations cluster together. The size of the circle indicates the number of views received during the year. A “recommendation” is the appearance of another channels video in the recommended video sidebar that YouTube generates unique to each video and user.

These recommendations are how YouTube as a platform exercises its influence over what video’s people watch. It is public, easily quantified information that can be collected automatically. It can also be made neutral — not biased towards previous viewing history — through YouTube’s API (Application Programming Interface). This is the interface people use to interact with YouTube through other software.

I did not record guest appearances because that tells us little about the influence of the YouTube platform itself and is difficult to reliably collect. There are a few caveats with my approach:

I only included channels with significant focus on cultural commentary, or politics in the United States, which have more than 10,000 subscribers.

Some judgement was required to find and classify channels. A detailed description of how that was done, source code and data is available here

Some political channels may be missing. Unfortunately, there is no way to reliably amalgamate all political channels.

Given the supposed existence of shadowy right-wing networks dominating YouTube, the results are surprising. These are the three most important lessons that go against what we have been told about YouTube’s influence:

1. The left dominates views, the right has more channels

I expected to confirm my belief that the right dominates YouTube, which is probably because they have a larger (and increasing) number of individual YouTube content creators. But the data shows that YouTube is predominantly left-leaning in terms of total views for 2018 due to political TV pundits from mainstream broadcasters — such as John Oliver and Trevor Noah — posting their content.

2. YouTube recommendations are left/right neutral

This diagram shows the number of views in 2018 for each political category (left) and the recommendations as a portion of those views (right). Overall, recommendations are politically neutral, which is counter to the charge that the YouTube platform favors the reactionary right.

3. It is not clear if the “reactionary right” leads to the far-right

The claim that YouTube promotes more extreme views is tricky to analyse, because the boundaries that separate the ‘extreme’ from the merely controversial, or unorthodox, are subjectively determined. But my impression is that recommendations tend to flow the opposite way — from the less popular channels to the more mainstream. This supports what YouTube says about their algorithm:

It favors recent, popular videos.

Based on your profile (or the current video for anonymous access) it uses a predictive model, built to maximize the likelihood you will watch the recommended video to the end and enjoy it.

Whether people are recommended more extreme content will depend on their viewing history. And even then, the preponderance of recommendations will be for popular, mainstream videos.

From reviewing the summary of recommendations between channels, it is clear that they reflect the polarized clusters of the people who watch them. It isn’t clear, though, whether YouTube recommendations actively increase existing polarization. Some studies have shown the opposite to be true — that exposing people to opposing views on social media can, in fact, increase polarization. For example, showing a Young Turks video to a Ben Shapiro fan might just as probably make them think worse of the left than better.

Dave Rubin seems to be at the center of the meta-discussion around political YouTube. The Data & Society report shows how he is connected to a white nationalist through mutual guest Carl Benjamin (a YouTuber who goes by the pseudonym Sargon of Akkad).

The path from any one person to another in any highly connected network is short, so picking this out is quite meaningless. An anecdote from Stephen Fry will suffice to reject this “six degrees of separation”-style argument:

When the evening was over Alistair Cooke shook my hand goodbye and held it firmly, saying, ‘This hand you are shaking once shook the hand of Bertrand Russell.’

‘Wow!’ I said, duly impressed.

‘No, No,’ said Cooke, ‘It goes further than that. Bertrand Russell knew Robert Browning. Bertrand Russell’s aunt danced with Napoleon. That’s how close we all are to history. Just a few handshakes away.

To frame this in a more meaningful way, does Dave Rubin have recommended videos that lean more towards white nationalism? Here are the recommendation flows through the Rubin Report channel:

The Rubin Report both recommends and receives viewed recommendations from centrist and far-right channels despite identifying as a classical liberal (libertarian). I don’t think this is proof he is secretly a conservative, but it does show that the audience cares more about which side you criticize than your political identity. Counter to the report’s narrative, the recommendation flows for Dave Rubin are a moderating influence — receiving more recommendations from the far right than it gives, while recommending mainly mainstream conservative and centrist channels.

Who are the “reactionary right”?

Ezra Klein and Rebecca Lewis agree on the distinguishing feature that unites the “reactionary right” tribe:

Many of these YouTubers are less defined by any single ideology than they are by a ‘reactionary’ position: a general opposition to feminism, social justice, or left-wing politics.

I agree that this is the main dividing line between the various political tribes of YouTube. There is very little discussion of taxation, environment, and other policy issues. Mostly discussions revolve around the culture wars, with a fundamental split on the issue of social justice.

But I think the Data & Society report has created a definition for the “reactionary right” for the purpose of problematizing them rather than as a useful label for understanding the political dynamics. Anything outside of a narrow progressivism, anything that is deemed to conflict with the goals of social justice and left-wing politics, is the target. Not only does this reject the idea that the Left can also be opposed to these things, but their definition is so broad as to include a great swathe of Americans.

The Hidden Tribes Report from More in Common surveyed a representative sample of 8,000 Americans and — using a cluster analysis — created seven broadly representative political tribes: devoted conservatives, traditional conservatives, moderates, politically disengaged, passive liberals, traditional liberals and progressive activists. Progressive activists make up only 8% of the population, and on issues concerning political correctness they stand alone.

This YouGov poll from 2016 shows that most Americans also align with the “reactionary right” on cultural appropriation.

Although I do not believe YouTube incentivises extremism, or that YouTube is predominantly right-wing, I still believe that the debate surrounding social justice issues could be less divisive. There seems to be a higher proportion of reactionary anti-social justice content compared to other platforms, and many YouTubers focus on the most extreme actions of progressive activists — unfairly labelling this as indicative of “the left”. Most of YouTubers are reacting to the issue of the day, especially when their outgroup does something outrageous. You also see the same from leftist YouTubers.

Despite this, calls for censorship, such as are implied in the Data & Society report, are intolerant, partisan, and extreme. Their targets include centrist and mainstream right commentators (e.g. Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager) and they offer no viewpoint-neutral rules of what an acceptable YouTube video is. The justification offered is that their videos are “harmful” — a concept that has crept so far that it is almost meaningless. Indeed, the harmfulness of a video seems to be a factor of the viewer’s politics more than the video itself.

I think our tribal instincts make politics on social media worse than expected, but I am hopeful that new social norms and effective platform “nudges” will develop. To do this, we all need to work hard to tolerate and empathize with people in our out-groups. I will do this right now and show some love to the progressive activists. I would like to endorse the leftist channels of ContraPoints, Robert Wright and Ezra Klein (who is, in fact, the author of the Vox article I just disagreed with). They seem genuinely interested in ideas and have demonstrated a willingness to attempt good discourse outside their own tribes. This is what political YouTube needs more of.

28th Dec 2018

Updated images with more recent data & new channels. Removed “Exclusively critical of left” category

14th Jan 2019

Updated political landscape image with most recent data and new groupings