YouTube Is Reportedly Combating 'Captain Marvel' Trolls by Changing Its Search Algorithm

Captain Marvel is currently enjoying a pretty successful run at the box office, and it looks like yet another online platform is helping keep the positivity up.

The Verge's Julia Alexander recently discovered a new change in YouTube's algorithm, with regards to videos that pop up when searching for Captain Marvel star Brie Larson. While just days ago, the top results when searching for "Brie Larson" appeared to be anti-Captain Marvel rant videos, the current top results show interviews and other official videos involving the actress.

This is kind of a fascinating discovery: YouTube seems to have changed the immediate "Brie Larson" search results to News. That pushes up authoritative sources and, in turn, pushes troll or MRA-style video rants pretty far down the page. Here's what it was versus now. pic.twitter.com/ifw9JjXQie

— julia 🤔 alexander (@loudmouthjulia) March 7, 2019

As Alexander outlines in her article, this appears to have changed due to one edit to YouTube's algorithm, which marked Larson's name as a news-worthy search item. This option, which was implemented in response to videos surrounding the Las Vegas mass shooting, allowed videos from "authoritative sources" to be at the top of the results, as opposed to conspiracy videos.

This is just the latest digital change that appears to have popped up in response to Captain Marvel backlash, after the Rotten Tomatoes audience score was "review bombed" almost a full month before the film actually debuted in theaters. In the time since, Rotten Tomatoes has both changed how fans can review upcoming films, and purged over 50,000 user reviews from their website, both of which have helped the audience score reflect the actual response to the film.

With Captain Marvel currently earning well above its initial box office projections and inspiring a legion of fans, it's safe to say that the online backlash might not be having the intended impact.

"The mere fact that you give a voice or a platform to people who normally don't have a platform is part of the problem," Samuel L. Jackson, who reprises his role as Nick Fury in the film, said in a recent interview. "You can have an opinion that you don't really have to be responsible for because nobody's going to see you, nobody's going to challenge you on it and if you want to bring somebody down or ruin somebody's day, you can say anything. Everybody doesn't want to be uplifting and that's pretty much what that problem is."

"I don't pay attention to it." Lashana Lynch, who plays Maria Lambeau, added. "I don't read it, I don't watch anything, I don't pay attention to it — especially when I'm releasing a movie I'm very, very proud of. Everyone worked very hard on this movie. Everyone works very hard on every movie. You see the credits at the end? There's hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands, involved in this and it's just important to give everyone their props. It's very easy to hide behind a screen and say what you think."

Captain Marvel is in theaters now. It will be followed by Avengers: Endgame on April 26th, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.