Privacy Policy

Last Updated on Oct 2021

Introduction

This Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand (i) the purpose of our project, (ii) what information we collect through our extension (iiI) how we use such the collected data, and (iv) how will we share the data collected.

About us

We are researchers in the Information School at the University of Washington. We have developed the chrome extension as part of a research study about personalization and bias in YouTube searches and recommendations related to elections 2020.

What information do we collect?

Once users install the plugin, they will be required to click on the plugin button every day. Once the button is clicked, the plugin will automatically open two browser windows (one incognito and one standard), open YouTube, watch videos on YouTube (muted), save the video page HTML that contains video recommendations, open YouTube homepage, and save the homepage HTML, perform search queries on YouTube automatically and save Search Result HTML that contains the search results. The collected HTMLs are then send to the backend server. The plugin will collect data for 3 weeks after which it will not perform any action. It is also important to note that: -

• we are not tracking user activity on YouTube. The plugin has a pre-selected list of videos that it will watch and for which it will collect video recommendations and a pre-selected list of search results that it will search.

• plugin starts watching a pre-selected video, click on up-next videos consecutively for a certain number of times, and for every video, we will be collecting the video HTML containing the video recommendations.

• The plugin has been coded to watch preselected videos every day for three weeks. Once, all the pre-selected videos have been watched, the plugin will not perform any action even if the user does not uninstall the plugin.

We are also collecting user's email address to determine whether they are logged in to YouTube at the time of running the extension. We are not collecting any sensitive information that might be present in the HTTP response from YouTube like name, geolocation, etc.

How do we use the information?

We will use the information collected for research and education purposes.

What information do we share?

We will share the YouTube search results and recommendations that our plugin collects, via a website/GitHub repository. While releasing data to the public, all participants will be referenced via code (for example P1, P2, etc.), thus, protecting their identity. No real name or identifiable data (e.g. email) will be shared.

Contact us

Prerna Juneja (prerna79@uw.edu) or Dr. Tanushree Mitra (tmitra@uw.edu)