Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s videos on industrialist Gautam Adani have fewer views despite similar user engagement as other videos, the Congress has said in a letter to YouTube. The party has further alleged that the browse feature for these specific videos seem to have been “algorithmically suppressed”.
Sam Pitroda, chairperson of the Indian Overseas Congress, has flagged the issue in a letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Mr. Gandhi’s team, Mr. Pitroda wrote in the letter, finds it a “bit bizarre and are searching for an explanation”. “They have used YouTube’s own data and analytics to show that viewership of videos of Mr. Adani are being suppressed, perhaps unwittingly and algorithmically,” he added.
To support its claim, the Congress party has also submitted a brief presentation analysing the viewership data of the video series on Mr. Adani, called ‘Mitr Kaal’, versus his video from the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The positive interactions of the Bharat Jodo Yatra video at 83,602 is less than that of ‘Mitr Kaal‘ episode one at 99,197 and yet, the party pointed out that while the Bharat Jodo Yatra video got over 20 lakh views, the ‘Mitr Kaal‘ video got only 4.78 lakh views. According to the party’s presentation, positive interactions have an 89% to increase views.
Similarly, the second episode in the series have double the interactions of Mr. Gandhi’s Cambridge video but similar number of views.
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The party has alleged systematic “algorithmic suppression”. Most people see videos through the ‘YouTube Browse’ feature, where the home page throws in recommendations. In the case of Mr. Gandhi’s channel, the party claims this feature has been down since February 9.
Data compiled by independent social media analytics firm Social Blade confirms this trend in declining views of Mr. Gandhi videos. According to the firm, the monthly views for Mr. Gandhi’s videos increased from 4.6 lakh in September 2022 to over 33 million in January 2023.
However, the number of subscribers added to his channel on a 30-day rolling basis declined two-thirds compared with the previous month, and the video views in the last 30 days have decreased by over 59%.
(With inputs from Aroon Deep.)
