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YouTube Will Add Information From Wikipedia To Videos About Conspiracies (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the push-back dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects, its CEO said today. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that these text boxes, which the company is calling "information cues," would begin appearing on conspiracy-related videos within the next couple of weeks. Wojcicki, who spoke Tuesday evening at a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, showed examples of information cues for videos about the moon landing and chemtrails. "When there are videos that are focused around something that's a conspiracy -- and we're using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia -- then we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event," Wojcicki said. The information cues that Wojcicki demonstrated appeared directly below the video as a short block of text, with a link to Wikipedia for more information. Wikipedia -- a crowdsourced encyclopedia written by volunteers -- is an imperfect source of information, one which most college students are still forbidden from citing in their papers. But it generally provides a more neutral, empirical approach to understanding conspiracies than the more sensationalist videos that appear on YouTube.

2 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Doesn't matter. Won't convince anyone. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    The irony of linking to RationalWiki on the topic of fighting self reinforcing echo chambers and conspiracy is really too rich.

    Hint: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate
    Then compare to http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate
    And ask yourself why a meme site is more capable of representing different sides.

  2. Re: Doesn't matter. Won't convince anyone. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: -1, Troll

    Riiight, because there is no such thing as a conspiracy.

    And yet magically in the official 9/11 Commission Report any mention of Building 7 is completely omitted. Gee, that's not suspicious in the least bit.

    Let's also conveniently ignore the fact that the BBC admits they don't know what happened to the BBC World tapes. Gee, only one of the most important events in the new millennium and they don't know if they lost or destroyed the tapes?!?!?!

    Let's ignore all the eye witness accounts..

    Of all the bullshit conspiracies out there -- there are only three that are true:

    1. We are not alone (which will become known fact ~2024),
    2. The American Government was responsible for using controlled demolitions on building 7,
    3. ... not important enough to mention ...

    Only an idiot would believe that "a fire" was magically responsible for WTC 7.