YouTube removes a million 'dangerous' videos
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YouTube says it has been deleted 0 million videos from its platform containing dangerous COVID-19 misinformation since February 2020.

YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mahon, shared a statistic in a blog post that outlines the company’s approach to how the company manages disinformation on its platform. “Disinformation has shifted from marginal to mainstream”,

“No longer confined to the closed-off worlds of Holocaust deniers or 9-11 observers, it now extends into every facet of society, sometimes tearing through communities at a mind-boggling speed.”

Mahon also argued that “bad content” makes up only a small percentage of total YouTube content. “Bad content represents only a small percentage of the billions of videos on YouTube (about 0.16-0.18% of total views are found to be content that violates our policies).” He added that YouTube removes nearly 10 million videos every quarter, “the majority of which don’t even reach 10 views.”

YouTube and Facebook have come under particular scrutiny during the pandemic for their policies around health disinformation.

Facebook released a report last week claiming its most popular post is memes and other non-political content. And, faced with criticism of its handling of COVID-19 and misinformation about vaccines, the company has argued that misinformation about vaccines is not representative of the kind of content most users see.

Both platforms have well over a billion users, which means that even a small amount of content can have a far-reaching impact. And both platforms have so far declined to release details about how vaccine and health misinformation is spreading or how many users are dealing with it.

YouTube is also working to “gather information from trusted sources and reduce the spread of videos containing harmful misinformation.” Mahon also said removing misinformation is just one aspect of the company’s approach.



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