YouTube to stop recommending Conspiracy Videos

YouTube, the most popular video sharing platform owned by Google has announced that it will no longer recommend videos that “come close to” violating their laid down community guidelines, such as conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos and contents. 

Contents like videos “claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11” will no longer be recommended on the platform, NBC News reported on Monday.

The particular blog post from YouTube, published on January 25, noted that videos the site recommends, usually after a user has viewed one, would no longer lead to similar videos and instead would “pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics”.

It was further noted by YouTube in the post that the action is meant to “reduce the spread of content that comes close to - but doesn’t quite cross the line of - violating” their laid down community policies.

One important thing to take note of is that the change will not affect the videos’ availability. And if users have subscribed to a channel that, for instance, produces conspiracy content, or if they search for it, they will still see related recommendations, the Google owned company said.

On Saturday, Guillaume Chaslot, a former engineer for Google, hailed the move as a “historic victory”.

Based on report, he helped build the Artificial Intelligence (AI) used to curate recommended videos.

“It’s only the beginning of a more humane technology. Technology that empowers all of us, instead of deceiving the most vulnerable,” said Chaslot.

Source: Link