A progressive writer was frustrated last week after she discovered a simple search for “abortion” on YouTube yielded a series of pro-life video results.
April Glaser, a journalist for Slate, revealed via Twitter that she contacted YouTube after she typed “abortion” into the website’s search bar and was met with “a horrifying mix of gore and dangerous misinformation.”
It's worth noting that YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world. And its answers on women's health matter
— april glaser (@aprilaser) December 21, 2018
Glaser claimed YouTube changed the algorithm for its search results after she reached out to the Silicon Valley-based company.
In her accompanying article, the Slate writer argued YouTube showed too many pro-life videos, revealing the dangers and graphic nature of abortion. She went on to say the website didn’t feature enough pro-abortion videos.
While Glaser said the “abortion” search results at Google, which owns YouTube, were “relatively staid,” she felt she’d entered “a whole other universe” when she perused the video website.
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“Before I raised the issue with YouTube late last week,” she wrote, “the top search results for ‘abortion’ on the site were almost all anti-abortion — and frequently misleading.”
YouTube’s willingness to immediately alter the algorithm to give more favorable results to Glaser went quite a ways in revealing the company’s left-leaning perspective.
Well, what have we here? Slate writer claims she got YouTube to change search results to reflect her pro-baby-killing views. Tell me more about how there's no anti-conservative bias. https://t.co/rZ93unCsCq pic.twitter.com/KXIWVXdbD7
— Paula Bolyard (@pbolyard) December 23, 2018
This isn’t the first time Google has shown its cards when it comes to abortion.
Earlier this year, during Ireland’s referendum on the legality of abortion, the internet behemoth announced it would prohibit all advertisements coming from international sources — namely, the U.S. — leading up to and during the vote.
But Google didn’t stop there. Eventually, the social media network decided to ban all ads, both foreign and domestic, that pertained in any way to Ireland’s abortion law. That regulation applied to YouTube.