YouTube removes 1 mn videos for dangerous COVID misinformation
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L New Delhi: Google-owned YouTube on Wednesday it has removed more than one million videos with "dangerous coronavirus misinformation" since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The statement by the Google-owned video platform comes as social media platforms are under fire from political leaders for failing to stem the spread of false and harmful misinformation and disinformation about the virus and other topics.
According to YouTube's Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, if we only focus on what we remove, we're missing the massive amount of content that people actually see.
"Bad content represents only a tiny percentage of the billions of videos on YouTube (about .16-.18 percent of total views turn out to be content that violates our policies)," he said in a blog post on Wednesday.
"Misinformation has moved from the marginal to the mainstream. No longer contained to the sealed-off worlds of Holocaust deniers or 9-11 truthers, it now stretches into every facet of society, sometimes tearing through communities with blistering speed," he emphasised.
He added that YouTube removes almost 10 million videos each quarter, "the majority of which don't even reach 10 views."
"Speedy removals will always be important but we know they're not nearly enough. Instead, it's how we also treat all the content we're leaving up on YouTube that gives us the best path forward," he said.
YouTube is ratcheting up information from trusted sources and reducing the spread of videos with harmful misinformation.
"For COVID, we rely on expert consensus from health organisations like the CDC and WHO to track the science as it develops. In most other cases, misinformation is less clear-cut," Mohan said.
Videos that violate the vaccine policy, according to YouTube's rules, are those that contradict expert consensus on the vaccines from health authorities or the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Other platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, have also rolled out policies to reduce the spread and reach of such content.