Auditing the Impact of Cross-Site Web Tracking on YouTube Political and Misinformation Recommendations
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866912983696801792 |
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| author | Chouaki, Salim Nazir, Savaiz Siby, Sandra |
| author_facet | Chouaki, Salim Nazir, Savaiz Siby, Sandra |
| contents | YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly analyzed how recommendations evolve based on users' watch history within the platform. Nevertheless, recommendations can also depend on off-platform browsing activity that Google collects via trackers on news websites, a factor that has not been considered so far. To fill this gap, we propose a sock-puppet-based experimental framework that automatically interacts with news media articles and then collects YouTube recommendations to measure how cross-site tracking affects the political and misinformation content users see. Moreover, by running our audits in both tracking-permissive and tracking-restrictive browser environments, we assess whether common privacy-focused browsers can protect users from tracking-driven political and misinformation bubbles on YouTube. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25302 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Auditing the Impact of Cross-Site Web Tracking on YouTube Political and Misinformation Recommendations Chouaki, Salim Nazir, Savaiz Siby, Sandra Computers and Society Social and Information Networks YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly analyzed how recommendations evolve based on users' watch history within the platform. Nevertheless, recommendations can also depend on off-platform browsing activity that Google collects via trackers on news websites, a factor that has not been considered so far. To fill this gap, we propose a sock-puppet-based experimental framework that automatically interacts with news media articles and then collects YouTube recommendations to measure how cross-site tracking affects the political and misinformation content users see. Moreover, by running our audits in both tracking-permissive and tracking-restrictive browser environments, we assess whether common privacy-focused browsers can protect users from tracking-driven political and misinformation bubbles on YouTube. |
| title | Auditing the Impact of Cross-Site Web Tracking on YouTube Political and Misinformation Recommendations |
| topic | Computers and Society Social and Information Networks |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25302 |