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YouTube Will Add Information From Wikipedia To Videos About Conspiracies (theverge.com)
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.
It won't change any minds, but it might prevent people from falling for it to begin with.
I remember when I first discovered moon landing conspiracy sites. I was fascinated and went down that rabbit hole until I stumbled onto a debunking site.
Since I was just looking into it for the first time, I had no commitment to it, and I was able to see that the debunkers has much simpler, more plausible arguments.
But if I had found the debunkers after telling people about it for a year, I might not have had the strength to admit I was wrong. So thanks, Internet debunkers. You do good work.
You know what...no. Every single thing you hold dear is a contentious issue if the audience is wide enough.
Freedom of religion is a contentious issue. In America we have it. In Iran they don't.
Free and fair elections are a contentious issue. In much of the west we have them, in much of the rest of the world they don't and they make a point of touting it as a superior alternative to ours...and some people here quietly agree.
Same thing for blind justice, property rights, the right to operate an automobile, plastic bags in grocery stores. All of is a contentious issue.
So unless you plan fact-check every video for any expression of an opinion or advocacy of a contentious issue, you shouldn't do it at all.
If a Christian theologian were to put a video of his sermon, would you want little atheist factboxes popping up around it? Maybe you would, but you can't expect him to stay on the platform if it's going to go at his content with a thousand little pinpricks.
If an atheist like Richard Dawkins puts up a lecture of his, is it sensible for little factboxes of REPENT SINNERS to pop up there?
Be serious dude. You're either responsible for policing all of the content on your platform or you're responsible for none of it. There's very little ground in the middle.