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YouTube Will Put Disclaimers On State-Funded Broadcasts To Fight Propaganda (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: YouTube's latest strategy to fight the spread of misinformation involves putting a disclaimer on videos from certain news sources. The online video website announced it will start labeling videos posted by state-funded broadcasters to alert viewers that the content is, in some part, funded by a government source. YouTube will begin labeling videos today, and the policy extends to outlets including the US's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Russian government broadcaster RT. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, PBS videos will now have the label "publicly funded American broadcaster," while RT will have this disclaimer: "RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government." The new policy is YouTube's way of informing viewers about where the content they're watching is coming from, a piece of information often hidden or left unsought by the viewers themselves. "The principle here is to provide more information to our users, and let our users make the judgment themselves, as opposed to us being in the business of providing any sort of editorial judgment on any of these things ourselves," YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan told the WSJ.

2 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Now we just need... by mysidia · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Disclaimers on SPECIAL-INTEREST/ACTIVIST GROUP funded broadcasts and also CORPORATE funded broadcasts.

    Also, Comments made to government officials by people being paid by a corporation should be required to contain a disclaimer identifying the relationship and whether they are being paid in general, or whether they are being paid to influence government officials, And any comment to a town hall or regulatory body's comment process paid for by a corporation must begin with disclaimer "This comment is a paid comment by XX corp".

    Furthermore, any "paid protestor" must carry high-visibility signage identifying that they are being paid to take this action.

    STATE-FUNDED broadcasts should be identified too, but they are the least of our worries ---- the real worry should be paid political messages in general.

  2. This Will Backfire by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1, Interesting

    People don't trust CNN, MSNBC, etc because they lie fucking constantly. If you start saying all the guys not lying are foreign government sponsored people will just start to like those governments.