Anyone that has been on the internet recently would see that there is no shortage of people that are trying to spread misinformation out there. In fact, most of the time any news that you see on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt for a wide variety of reasons. The news cycle is extremly fast which means that sometimes news reporters will sacrifice quality of news for the sake of posting it before anyone else manages to, and then of course there are the countless people that are simply trying to trick you into believing a certain point of view in spite of the fact that it is not true at all.
One of the biggest places where fake news often ends up getting posted is on YouTube, and in the wake of one of the biggest elections in the world happening this year, the US presidential election, YouTube has decided to crack down on content that can be classified as political misinformation. This includes videos that try to mislead voters by providing wrong data, cast aspersions on presidential candidates based on dubious information as well as a variety of other ways in which people try to manipulate the political process in order to meet their own ends.
Additionally, Leslie Miller, YouTube's VP of Government Affairs and Public Policy, explained that its company will remove "channels that attempt to impersonate another person or channel". Plus, YouTube reserves the right to terminate channels that try to manipulate engagement metrics (like, comments or views) with the help of "automatic systems or by serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers."
It’s important to note that parody videos are not included in this policy. Videos made for humorous effect are not going to be removed, although many would say that with the sheer volume of content that gets uploaded to YouTube on a regular basis, the fact of the matter is that filtering it out is not going to be easy in the first place. Only time will tell whether or not this is the sort of thing that ends up helping the political process or if it’s just a bandaid solution that does not end up doing all that much good in the first place.
Photo: Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Read next: Artist Creates Virtual Traffic Jam On Google Maps With A Few Dozen Smartphones, Google Responds
One of the biggest places where fake news often ends up getting posted is on YouTube, and in the wake of one of the biggest elections in the world happening this year, the US presidential election, YouTube has decided to crack down on content that can be classified as political misinformation. This includes videos that try to mislead voters by providing wrong data, cast aspersions on presidential candidates based on dubious information as well as a variety of other ways in which people try to manipulate the political process in order to meet their own ends.
Additionally, Leslie Miller, YouTube's VP of Government Affairs and Public Policy, explained that its company will remove "channels that attempt to impersonate another person or channel". Plus, YouTube reserves the right to terminate channels that try to manipulate engagement metrics (like, comments or views) with the help of "automatic systems or by serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers."
It’s important to note that parody videos are not included in this policy. Videos made for humorous effect are not going to be removed, although many would say that with the sheer volume of content that gets uploaded to YouTube on a regular basis, the fact of the matter is that filtering it out is not going to be easy in the first place. Only time will tell whether or not this is the sort of thing that ends up helping the political process or if it’s just a bandaid solution that does not end up doing all that much good in the first place.
Photo: Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Read next: Artist Creates Virtual Traffic Jam On Google Maps With A Few Dozen Smartphones, Google Responds
