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

Posted by BeauHD on from the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks dept.

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.

2 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    1. Re:Why? by TigerPlish · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.