Yesterday, I wrote about YouTube’s algorithmic screwup which somehow associated images of Notre-Dame Cathedral burning with the 9/11 attacks and embedded information about those attacks under news organizations’ live streams from Paris. And in that piece, I noted a number of other times YouTube’s algorithm — which is meant to put reliable information under conspiracy videos on topics like the moon landing, the Sandy Hook shootings, and yes, 9/11 — had screwed up.

(At various points, YouTube has put 9/11 information under videos of 1970s New York at Christmastime, a rocket launch, a “Chill Music” streaming radio station, and a random San Francisco fire. It’s also done things like label a professor’s retirement video with a Star of David and the label “Jew.”)

seen on a video of my father last fall, since removed. pic.twitter.com/O9nM1U1uAn

— Luke Waltzer (@lwaltzer) April 15, 2019

Anyway, amid these specific complaints, I thought it was worth highlighting a criticism of YouTube’s system made last year by Mike Caulfield, who runs the Digital Polarization Initiative. Caulfield worried that embedding external information from Encyclopedia Britannica or other trusted sources might end up adding credibility to conspiracy videos rather than reducing it.

I was putting together materials for my online media literacy class and I was about to pull this video, which has half a million views and proposes that AIDS is the “greatest lie of the 21st century.” According to the video, HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, retrovirals do (I think that was the point, I honestly began to tune out).

But then I noticed one of the touches that Google has added recently: a link to a respectable article on the subject of AIDS. This is a technique that has some merit: don’t censor, but show clear links to more authoritative sources that provide better information.

At least that’s what I thought before I saw it in practice. Now I’m not sure. Take a look at what this looks like:

I’m trying to imagine my students parsing this page, and I can’t help but think without a flag to indicate this video is dangerously wrong that students will see the encyclopedic annotation and assume (without reading it of course) that it makes this video more trustworthy. It’s clean looking, it’s got a link to Encyclopedia Britannica, and what my own work with students and what Sam Wineburg’s research has shown is that these features may contribute to a “page gestalt” that causes the students to read this as more authoritative, not less — even if the text at the link directly contradicts the video. It’s quite possible that the easiness on the eyes and the presence of an authoritative link calms the mind, and opens it to the stream of bullshit coming from this guy’s mouth.

Sam Wineburg is the Stanford professor who’s done a number of research projects aimed at unpacking how, exactly, people determine the credibility of a given piece of media. (Research subjects — even Ph.D. historians! — “often fell victim to easily manipulated features of websites, such as official-looking logos and domain names. They read vertically, staying within a website to evaluate its reliability. In contrast, fact checkers read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs in order to judge the credibility of the original site. Compared to the other groups, fact checkers arrived at more warranted conclusions in a fraction of the time.”)

Caulfield also noted a Holocaust-denial video to which YouTube had added a Holocaust infobox. “What a person probably needs to know here is not this summary of what the Holocaust was,” he wrote. “The context card here functions, on a brief scan, like a label, and the relevant context of this video is not really the Holocaust, but Holocaust denialism, who promotes it, and why.”

(A commenter on his post notes that some viewers might also come away from these tagged videos thinking that Encyclopedia Britannica had produced the video as well as the infobox information.)

I should note that, searching on Twitter yesterday, I found a lot of conspiracy theorists — flat-earthers, contrail watchers, QAnon fans, Holocaust deniers, Illuminati obsessives — who were very upset about YouTube’s addenda to their videos, viewing it as some mix of censorship and schoolmarmishness. So they, at least, don’t seem to think legitimacy is being added.

It’s amazing that YouTube has to literally insert an Encyclopedia Britannica entry beneath the search box as if to triple-confirm anyone searching for the topic doesn’t stray from the acceptable PC path. pic.twitter.com/PZJ7VCsbmJ

— ⚫️ Alt Pine Cabin ⚫️ (@AltCabin14) April 2, 2019

A search on @YouTube while looking for statements made by James Clapper gave me one of these new Encyclopedia Britannica top results of @BarackObama almost like it's an attempt to protect his image &/or build him up#LeaveYouTubeToo

— Ryan Nielsen (@Yankecwby) March 25, 2019

Another example was a You Tuber reporting an anomaly in the skies. You Tube inserted a Britannica window on Contrails. We can think for ourselves and don't need You Tube to interpret the videos we choose to watch! https://t.co/xe0zd2Qvb1 pic.twitter.com/gNfGZEvX2d

— Average John Doe (@P4cooler) March 6, 2019

Why does YouTube place an encyclopedia ad claiming the Illuminati no longer exists, on Illuminati videos, and yet you can google Illuminati and find an Illuminati site where people can apply to join?

Can't trust Encyclopedia Britannica even!

— quietlionweb.com (@Whoyagottatweet) February 12, 2019

Finally, predictably — and just as there would be without YouTube’s 9/11 error — there are bad actors across social media today doing their best to blame Muslims for the fire (there’s zero evidence for that).

The account posting this extremely viral racist video edit cited @carlosmonsoor for the video.

He posted a YouTube version of the edited “Allahu Akbar” Notre Dame video with 12,000 views in a reply tweet to the President earlier today.

Still live on YouTube. pic.twitter.com/Je1HIuB8lF

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 16, 2019

NBC News’ Ben Collins tweeted about that fake video at 9:33 p.m. last night. Right now, about 14 hours later, that video is still up on YouTube — and it’s up to 38,000 views. (Don’t ask what the comments are like.)