YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories with ‘Authoritative’ Context and Outside Links

July 11th, 2018

More than ever: https://duckduckgo.com/

Via: The Verge:

YouTube is adding “authoritative” context to search results about conspiracy-prone topics like the Moon landing and the Oklahoma City Bombing, as well as putting $25 million toward news outlets producing videos. Today, the company announced a new step in its Google News Initiative, a program it launched in March. The update is focused on reducing misinformation on YouTube, including the conspiracy theories that have flourished after events like the Parkland shooting.

This update includes new features for breaking news updates and long-standing conspiracy theories. YouTube is implementing a change it announced in March, annotating conspiracy-related pages with text from “trusted sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica.” And in the hours after a major news event, YouTube will supplement search results with links to news articles, reasoning that rigorous outlets often publish text before producing video. “It’s very easy to quickly produce and upload low-quality videos spreading misinformation around a developing news event,” said YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan, but harder to make an authoritative video about a developing story.

YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It’s establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it’s providing money for “sustainable” video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers. (Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, is a member of the working group.) It’s previously invested money in digital literacy programs for teenagers, recruiting prominent YouTube creators to promote the cause.

One Response to “YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories with ‘Authoritative’ Context and Outside Links”

  1. Dennis says:

    A little story: I opened youtube on my iphone the other day on a supposedly private browser that comes with VPN. To my shock, the page showed as ‘recommended’ an obscure video related to several I’d watched a few days before…on a desktop elsewhere. I don’t know what happened there, but I deleted the app quicksmart.

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