YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories With 'Authoritative' Context and Outside Links (theverge.com)

In an effort to reduce misinformation on YouTube, the video-sharing website will be adding "authoritative" context to search results about conspiracy-prone topics, as well as putting $25 million toward news outlets producing videos. YouTube made the announcement today as part of a new step in its Google News Initiative, a journalism-focused program that aims to help publishers earn revenue and combat fake news. The Verge reports: This update includes new features for breaking news updates and long-standing conspiracy theories. YouTube is implementing a change it announced in March, annotating conspiracy-related pages with text from "trusted sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica." And in the hours after a major news event, YouTube will supplement search results with links to news articles, reasoning that rigorous outlets often publish text before producing video.

YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It's establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it's providing money for "sustainable" video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers.

Comments

Why?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Sometimes it's fun to watch tinfoil-hat videos... But if you ARE going to try to be "authoritative", please do NOT use fresh news articles, especially about anything political, racial, or climate-based. Many of those have "corrections" issued a few days later, meaning that they were NOT in fact, authoritative. Better to just let it go as-is, and stop trying to hand-hold the viewer. Let people learn when they screw up, and learn the lesson that sometimes you need to check the facts that you hear, and also look at the other side as well to see if it has a better position backed with facts and logic.

Re:Why?

[Moryath]

You haven't been around humanity much if you think that people are currently learning when they screw up. Or what's your explanation for the number of inbred tinfoil-hatters who believe sites like Infowars?

Re:Why?

[Mashiki]

Good point. After all there's plenty of inbred tinfoil-hatters that believe sites like media matters, shareblue, and so on too.

Re:Why?

[AmiMoJo]

TFA shows that with breaking news there is a little warning saying that details may change. A search for "moon landing" uses a snippet from Encyclopedia Britannica.

Seems like they have thought this one through. It's very conservative.

Re:Why?

[Moryath]

If you are trying to compare Media Matters, which is primarily a fact-checking and informational review site, to a conspiracy peddler site like Infowars... well, you're part of the problem. False equivalence ploys by white supremacist conservatives are a common and well observed tactic.

Re:Why?

[PhrostyMcByte]

Let people learn when they screw up

Our last election, and even current reporting, showed that a lot of people do not learn, and even the ones that do end up learning too late. If Google can do something to flag obviously false reports as what they are, then I say more power to them -- it'll be doing us a service.

Even if they take things that are merely probably false or highly spun and supply a few links to what reputable sources say about the issue, that'd help keep people more informed and outside of their bubble.

I don't like having one company be an arbiter of truth either, but... if people can't do it for themselves, who is going to do it? Traditional news agencies have been unable to counter this round of nonsense, and in some cases are contributing to it.

Re:Why?

[TigerPlish]

Sometimes it's fun to watch tinfoil-hat videos...

Why? I'll use moon landings as an example. We went there, and we left tons of trash which are proof enough.. never mind the tons of film footage, photographs, experiments

Apollo, Gemini and Mercury made so many jobs for so many, directly and indirectly.

It was America's apogee, and after that it's been one long backslide. The moon deniers spit in the face of all that work. And if it's *that* easy to twist the denier's minds, what with all the hard evidence, then how easy is it to twist their minds on subjects with no evidence?

It's fun at first, then it's just sad. And the weak-minded are an exploitable things... food for thought.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still watch all the crazies you want. There will just be other suggested videos explaining why those people are total bat shit.

Re:Why?

[penandpaper]

Yea, what could possibly go wrong.

Re:Why?

[Mashiki]

Considering that media matters has a long history of "quote mining" aka manufacturing news & outrage, lying through omission, and pushing political agendas despite it's classification status. You're simply ignorant, and are happily defending a company that's just as bad.

I enjoyed the "white supremacy conservatives" bit. Get that racism and bigotry out early, fly that flag. It's doing a bang up job for the democrats and progressives. When you finish frothing at the mouth, you can sit down and read just how dirty of an organization it really is.

Re:Why?

[Moryath]

" the propaganda wing of the Democrat party"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Why?

[alvinrod]

Once people get an idea stuck in their mind, they tend to look for evidence to reinforce it rather than the other way around. This is something that everyone is guilty of, even really smart people. What they believe is rather inconsequential, but trying to get them to change their mind by arguing with them is almost impossible. It doesn't matter how much expertise you have or how many other sources, they'll all be ignored.

From personal experience the only effective method I've ever discovered to get people to stop believing something idiotic is to bet money against them. Granted this only works if it's something that's easily testable so that it can be demonstrated to them (remember, an expert opinion or published journal paper is useless), but it seems that whatever part of the brain deals with thinking about money sends interrupt requests at a might higher priority level. Continued disbelief on their part is met with offers for additional bets. No one has ever bet more than twice.

Re:Why?

[Mashiki]

I love how you trot out a book by a white supremacist hack who beat the "benghazi whee" tinfoil hat nonsense to death and derailed her own career by making crap up repeatedly, as your "source".

I'm amused that you're continuing to double down on your racism and bigotry. If that source is so terrible, why don't you pick it up and dispute it. I'll wait. I'll give you say 110 pages in and pick whatever you want.

But hey, that stuff must sell in the trailer park.

Oh boy, tripling down on the bigotry. What a beautiful face of modern progressiveness.

Re:Why?

[AmiMoJo]

Lots of things, but is the odd mistake that gets quickly fixed really worse than regularly showing conspiracy theories about the moon landings, US presidents being in the KKK, Obama declaring martial law, vaccines giving kids autism etc?

Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good here.

Re:Why?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Our last election, and even current reporting, showed that a lot of people do not learn, and even the ones that do end up learning too late.

Are you serious?

You didn't like the results of the last presidential election, so that means that video sites need to festoon any unapproved opinions and information with warnings and links to goodthink?

Re:Why?

[Mashiki]

You mean bog him down as a troll tactic?

Skim their post history, they don't believe it's a troll tactic. They simply believe that anyone who disagrees with the progressive agenda in any form are white nationalists. If you want to see the face of extremism, it's right there. And that, is just plain sad.

Re:Why?

[Moryath]

Let me get this straight. An article about a monetary donation to a fact checking site and two opinion articles, and you're too media illiterate to check the bylines?

I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

Re:Why?

[Moryath]

Nope. The ACA didn't take away 30 million people's healthcare.

You're thinking of the cross burners trying to REPEAL it. DARVO tactics again... unsurprising that white supremacist trolls use tactics of domestic abusers though.

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/who-...

Re:Why?

[PhrostyMcByte]

The person who won does not matter to my post. There is evidence showing that regardless of who you were voting for, you were being targeted. Some of it was more obvious than others, but people on all sides of the political spectrum -- me included -- failed to filter out some of the spin coming their way.

Stop jumping to conclusions with divisive outrage. It's what they wanted. There's no room for pride here.

Re:Why?

[GameboyRMH]

Exactly, and making perfect the enemy of good is just the tactic post-truth types love to use against fact-checking. Case in point: "Sometimes fresh news articles get corrected, therefore let's give batshit nutjobbery and Russian propaganda a head start (particularly on hot-button issues where I want to empower post-truth narratives) until things settle down."

Re:Why?

[penandpaper]

Odd mistake? How many mistakes does it take to damage the reputation of a "reputable source"? Are the major media outlets even held accountable for any misinformation they put out? No. No one is fired for putting out misinformation from any major outlet and there is never any accountability for them deceiving the public at large or pushing a political bias.*

Conspiracy theories are held by a very slime minority of people. So what? You are going to give those conspiracies vindication because "look at what google and big media doesn't want me to see!". You're not going to change minds and you will cement the nutters belief.

What are we getting by allowing "those in power" declare what is "authoritative"? You are not going to convince the conspiracy nutters. All you are going to do is alienate alternative media, independent journalists, and push a biased agenda that Youtube and other outlets have too often shown to be more than willing to push.

That is not worth a few conspiracy videos being posted. Jet fuel can't melt steal beams... So what. Doesn't take a chemist or architect to know it doesn't matter. Putting 'an expert chemists opinion' on a 'jet fuel can't melt steal beams video will convince' no one.

Let's not pave the road to hell with good intentions.

* I don't think that there should be a consequence other than what the free market prescribes however that changes the moment you label anything 'The Decider of Authoritative Content'.

Re:Why?

[cayenne8]

Thing is....the are tin foil hatters and conspiracy theorists, until the aren't.

The govt has done some things, and lied about things over the history of our country....things like the revelations in the the Pentagon papers, and MKUltra, etc.

Things that until revealed, seemed like pretty kooky and unthinkable did come out to be true.

I'm sure we don't know ALL the things that have occurred by or sanctioned by our government over the years...

Re:Why?

[tehcyder]

Your last election was a choice between bad and worse. You cloose bad.

No, they chose worst.

Re:Why?

[AmiMoJo]

How many mistakes does it take to damage the reputation of a "reputable source"?

Depends on the nature of the mistake and if they publish corrections.

Re:Why?

[mysidia]

Many of those have "corrections" issued a few days later, meaning that they were NOT in fact, authoritative.

OK... So gather up corrections to any videos the user has watched, and when they arrive show them to the user as a "Notice bar" that will keep coming up until dismissed ---- If there is no correction, the noticebar can also be used to inform the user that a video they had watched was later found to be fake news with an optional link to a correcting source.

Re:Why?

[CohibaVancouver]

Of course there are government conspiracies that don't come out until later. For example, there may be a conspiracy for the Trump Administration to collude with Russia to break up NATO and sow discord amongst Western Allies - But we just don't know yet - And may never know.

There may be a conspiracy for the Heritage Foundation to select the next Supreme Court Judge. But again, we don't know.

However, there are huge areas that are pretty cut-and-dry.

When Trump says the USA has a trade deficit with Canada, that's a lie that's easily disproven with facts. When Trump says "I have watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of MS-13 & clean out the toughest of situations." that's a lie that is easily disproven with facts.

That's the sort of thing we're taking about here when it comes to fact-checking.

Re:Why?

[tinkerton]

With a good telescope you can see there is a huge rocket visible on the moon. And I mean huge. That's the rocket they used to ship all that crew and shitloads of material over there which was needed to stage and film the fake moonlandings.

Re:Why?

[tinkerton]

NASA never found out and they couldn't complain when they got the bill. All they did was ask Kubrick to make it realistic and you know how perfectionist Kubrick was. The only way he saw to make it realistic was to film it on the moon behind their backs. Word is he got some help from the Russians.

Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you also eliminate fails videos and the 'you won't believe this trick' shit? Who the fuck is making all of these fake videos?

Frankly, it would be great is Youtube scrapped the recommendations all together. They suck balls.

This isn't going to help the way they want it to

[H3lldr0p]

The problem is that you have to have trust in the authoritative sources and the first thing the vast majority of the conspiracy peddlars do is to throw massive amounts of doubt upon said sources. This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.

It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.

Updated

[ka9dgx]

So, now we need to update the old Russian saying
""there's no truth in Pravda, and no You in YouTube"

Fake News is an opportunistic virus

[king neckbeard]

The reason "fake news" can thrive is because MSM is so constantly horseshit that people correctly distrust it. The problem is that the replacements often have lower quality and reliability. The answer is to bludgeon MSM into shape. Ban CNN's account for a week when they post a bullshit story, and this will be resolved pretty quickly, because it's treating the cause. What Youtube is proposing here is treating the symptoms.

Re:This isn't going to help the way they want it t

[swillden]

This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.

Depends on what you mean by "win". If by "win" you mean that the conspiracy theorists are convinced of the error of their ways, yeah, that's not going to happen. But if you mean that you'll prevent a significant number of visitors who would otherwise get sucked into the weirdness from getting sucked in, that seems much more feasible.

Supposed to cite sources in Wikipedia

[raymorris]

Aside from that, Wikipedia authors are supposed to cite reliable sources in the articles. Why? Because Wikipedia itself isn't a reliable source, it's only roughly as reliable as the sources it cites (or doesn't).

That said, on most topics it ends up being pretty good.

Who watches the watchmen?

[Texmaize]

The reason this is bad because currently the "authoritative" sources are actually incredibly biased, manufacture stories, and often hide information to further an agenda. They understand that if you control the narrative, you can manufacture a reality, or at least keep compliant people invested in such a narrative.

For example, you might yell tinfoil hate but here are a few off the top of my head:
Dan Rather, anchor long time CBS anchor, forced to resign in disgrace for manufacturing anti-conservative news http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBI...
Funny if you read the NY times and other articles attempting to pretend this was a normal stepping down

Brian Williams, NBC making false claims https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

NPR admitting press is biased and making up stories https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/...

If i need, I can go on. The point being it is easy to paint others with pejoratives like "tin foil hat" while failing to even consider much that you believe is likely from tainted perspective. Many people rightly fear that google (aka youtube) are censoring opinions that poke holes in their world view. Fake-news is more about people who disagree, not with people posting things that are untrue.

Re:Youtube engages in FUD, propaganda, censorship

[tinkerton]

I think that's a good post. This is just another step in a censorship drive of historic proportions. It's not very centralized though. Youtube for instance works with a Trusted Flagger Program. In principle these don't decide what to censor but Youtube says they advise very well so in practice just about anything these organisations don't like is removed. Youtube itself doesn't care. Fake news has got nothing to do with it.

Re:Youtube engages in FUD, propaganda, censorship

[eaglesrule]

Here is a short video from the ADL, Youtube's trusted flagger, describing their efforts to build a online hate index. If censorship isn't centralized yet, it soon will be.

The slide at :27 was extra interesting. And of course, comments on all their recent videos are disabled.