The riddle of the algorithm: "A kind of self

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Expand Video Transcript Algorithm Watch area

Which videos does Youtube recommend for the federal election?

Lorenz Matzat from Algorithm Watch wants to find out.

He is part of a research team that has set itself the goal of better understanding the YouTube algorithm.

Because how it works - why a video appears in a user's recommendations or not - only YouTube knows itself.

OT Lorenz Matzat, Algorithm Watch

"We have to examine YouTube's algorithm from the outside because YouTube, like Facebook or Twitter, does not give us access to how they make decisions, what machinery is at work that decides what I'll see next or what I'll see Investigating this from the outside is a form of self-defense in quotes, simply to say we have to gain access because these large companies have not yet been encouraged by law to grant this access for research and journalism. "

Why that would be important is obvious.

According to the Digital News Report 2020, social media is by far the most important source of news for 18-24 year olds on the internet.

OT Lorenz Matzat, Algorithm Watch

"Youtube's recommendation algorithm is relatively powerful because it helps determine what I see next. You can think of it like a remote control that switches over automatically, but I don't know what criteria it uses."

To change that, the researchers developed the "Dataskop" software.

The project is specifically about the following questions: Which news sources does Youtube compile its users?

Are users even kept on journalistic videos and if not: where do the recommendations lead?

OT Lorenz Matzat, Algorithm Watch

"Those who use Dataskop immediately see an evaluation of their YouTube profile as a visualization, where they can see, for example: what is the most frequently used channel, how many hours have they seen. But you can also see the experiments we are doing, So that we look, immediately explore and see which recommendations Youtube provides for certain videos. "

Users are called upon to share the results of the analysis with the research group; the free data donation is possible until August 18.

The data will be analyzed by scientists and journalists.

SPIEGEL is also involved in the project.

The first results are to be published before the general election.