YouTube's Algorithms Failed to Remove Violating Content Related to Suicide and Self-Harm

February 4, 2019

Reportedly, YouTube's content moderation algorithms failed to flag terms-of-service-violating videos related to suicide and self-harm. This alleged lapse resulted in the exposure of graphic content to young users through recommended videos, highlighting the need for robust harm prevention measures and responsible AI governance.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.638, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.632, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.617, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: youtube
Alleged developer: youtube
Alleged harmed parties: youtube-young-users, youtube-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/281

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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