YouTube is trying to reduce the spread of fake news.
Most people watch YouTube as their source of entertainment, basically as long as you have WIFI you can watch almost anything you’d like on YouTube. News, is very easy to get on YouTube as most people now have their own individual channels where they post their own information. When you think of social media, it is very easy to forget YouTube especially because they are rarely involved in any scandals that involve misinformation. But the reality is that as long as content is flowing every social media platform is responsible for the kind of content that is posted to reduce the flow of misleading content while also amplifying relevant, accurate news and information.
YouTube recently released a statement and said:
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve been working to raise authoritative voices on YouTube and reduce the spread of borderline content and harmful misinformation. And we are already seeing great progress. Authoritative news is thriving on our site. And since January 2019, we’ve launched over 30 different changes to reduce recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation. The result is a 70% average drop in watch time of this content coming from non-subscribed recommendations in the U.S.”
How will YouTube do this?
YouTube will now be giving credible and known channels will be given more of a priority. So for example if you search for a trending topic on YouTube “fake news” or less credible channels will actually be filtered out. YouTube has also been experimenting with different alternatives which include hiding comments. The results show that the platform is seeing positive benefits from such tests and changes, though the real test in Kenya will take place during our elections when fake news is mostly spread.
But what will this mean for up and coming content creators?
If you’re an up and coming creator, it basically means you need to up your SEO game to get your content recognized. You also need to make sure that you’re posting valuable content and use a good title that can be easily found. There’s nothing worse than creating content and your work goes unnoticed. You might have great content but if YouTube doesn’t consider you as a credible or authoritative channel then you’ll simply be out.
On the other hand the spread of fake news has to stop and we are glad that platforms such as YouTube are finally taking the right measures to do so.