YouTube's Safety Features Lost in Translation

Our report reveals YouTube inconsistently applies safety panels across 83 languages, creating unequal protection for non-English users.

07-08-2025

Project overview

Report cover

YouTube introduced safety features like Topical Context Information Panels (TCIPs) and Information Panels Providing Publisher Context (IPPPCs) to combat misinformation. Our comprehensive analysis of all 83 languages supported by YouTube reveals significant disparities in implementation.

Key findings:

  • Only English receives all 16 safety panels we tested
  • French, German, and Spanish get most features but lack fact-checker labels
  • African and Southeast Asian languages largely excluded from protections
  • Even within EU single market, funding labels appear inconsistently. Euronews is labeled in some countries but not in Denmark, Greece, Finland, Norway, Portugal

To make Youtube accountable in real time, we built a dashboard that check the availability of the panels and display them with interactive graphs. Check it at www.ytpanelmonitor.com.

This creates a two-tiered system where safety information access depends on language settings, potentially violating EU digital equality obligations and raising serious platform accountability concerns.

Project Details

Solution & Methodology

We developed automated scrapers using Playwright to systematically test safety panel availability across YouTube's 83 supported languages. Our methodology focused on 12 conspiracy-related queries (including COVID-19, climate change, and QAnon) and 4 types of publisher context panels covering news funding, fact-checkers, health authorities, and licensed doctors.

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