Conspiracy theories can drive even the sanest people obsessed over a highly sensationalized topic, and now is not the time to propagate hoaxes. With the COVID-19 pandemic still among us, misinformation can be actively harmful. It's for this reason that YouTube will now start fact-checking uploaded videos.
"When users are searching on YouTube around a specific claim, we want to give an opportunity for those fact checks to show up right then and there, when our users are looking for information - especially around fast-moving. quickly changing topics like COVID-19," Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer told The Verge. "But of course fact-checking will apply more broadly now that it's launching here in the US."
Fact-check articles will start appearing in relevant search results, using credible information pulled from third-party publishers, including The Washington Post Fact Checker, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and The Dispatch. YouTube will use ClaimReview's article tagging system, which is also used by Facebook, Google Search, and Bing.
In YouTube's blog post, it specifically mentions concerns around COVID-19 fake news as a driving force in the implementation of the new feature, noting the difficulty in keeping up with a rapidly changing news cycle.
The internet has amassed hoaxes about ingesting chemical agents, anti-malarial drugs, and ibuprofen as cures for the coronavirus, so YouTube is hard at work in obliterating any traces of misinformation on its platform. However, Google may not be able to get rid of wrong info as long as its compliant, but in providing trusted sources, the company hopes that it will bring clarity to the minds of viewers.
Until the feature's full implementation, however, we won't know for sure if the new feature can handle the huge task of taking down offensive videos. People who are already dug in on notions of COVID-19 as a hoax are not likely to be swayed by contextual information from PolitiFact or The Washington Post. That's just the nature of the post-information hellscape in which we all currently reside.
YouTube's fact-checking feature is similar to what Facebook launched earlier this month. The social network now notifies users when they've come across "harmful misinformation" about the coronavirus. Twitter also took down false COVID-19 tweets, including those linking 5G with the spread of the virus.
YouTube notes that the upcoming feature will take some time before fully implemented. The site still has to refine the efficacy of the feature and its system before global expansion.
