Study reveals YouTube commenters hostile to women scientists

A researcher reviewed 23,005 comments left on videos about science and related topics. You'll never guess what they found out about how YouTubers view women. Adrianne Jeffries, quoting Inoaka Amarasekara:

"I was quite disappointed by the time I'd gone through them," she said. "I could see why people would not want to be on YouTube."

The researchers found that about 14 percent of comments for female on-camera hosts were critical, compared to about six percent for male hosts.

They also found female hosts got a much larger proportion of comments about appearance (4.5 percent for women versus 1.4 percent for men) and comments that were sexist or sexual (nearly three percent of comments for women versus about a quarter-percent for men)

Imagine if, for a decade, Google left the world's largest social network to fester, allowing racial slurs, sexist abuse and any and all forms of bigotry to stand without moderation or even the slightest serious community management, all the while vigorously enforcing policies against marketing, spam and copyright infringement, making clear that nothing is there without its conscious assent. What a world that would be.