COVID-Related Misinformation Migration to BitChute and Odysee

Olga Papadopoulou (), Evangelia Kartsounidou and Symeon Papadopoulos
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Olga Papadopoulou: Centre for Research and Technology Hellas—CERTH, Information Technologies Institute—ITI, 6th km Harilaou-Thermi, 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece
Evangelia Kartsounidou: Centre for Research and Technology Hellas—CERTH, Information Technologies Institute—ITI, 6th km Harilaou-Thermi, 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece
Symeon Papadopoulos: Centre for Research and Technology Hellas—CERTH, Information Technologies Institute—ITI, 6th km Harilaou-Thermi, 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece

Future Internet, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: The overwhelming amount of information and misinformation on social media platforms has created a new role that these platforms are inclined to take on, that of the Internet custodian. Mainstream platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are under tremendous public and political pressure to combat disinformation and remove harmful content. Meanwhile, smaller platforms, such as BitChute and Odysee, have emerged and provide fertile ground for disinformation as a result of their low content-moderation policy. In this study, we analyze the phenomenon of removed content migration from YouTube to BitChute and Odysee. In particular, starting from a list of COVID-related videos removed from YouTube due to violating its misinformation policy, we find that ∼15% (1114 videos) of them migrated to the two low content-moderation platforms under study. This amounts to 4096 videos on BitChute and 1810 on Odysee. We present an analysis of this video dataset, revealing characteristics of misinformation dissemination similar to those on YouTube and other mainstream social media platforms. The BitChute–Odysee COVID-related dataset is publicly available for research purposes on misinformation analysis.

Keywords: content moderation; social media platforms; disinformation detection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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