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| Due to incorrect information YouTube deleted 1 million videos |
As of February 2020, YouTube has removed 1 million videos due to serious misinformation about the coronavirus. Include videos promoting abuse or claiming that the pandemic is a scam.
However, the platform has facilitated the spread of a lot of misinformation about the coronavirus. For example, last May, a controversial anti-vaccination video called Plandemic was viewed more than 7 million times before it was deleted.
YouTube Product Manager Neil Mahon shared these stats in a blog post explaining how the company deals with misinformation on its platform.
"Misinformation has shifted from a marginal form to a dominant form," Ma Hong wrote. It is no longer confined to a closed world and has now spread to all areas of society, sometimes tearing society apart very quickly.
At the same time, business leaders have argued that bad content is only a small part of the platform's content.
Scaling is the platform's biggest challenge in this regard. So many people have always been active on the platform, and it is difficult to respond to everything quickly enough in a timely manner.
A small delay can increase views for millions of viewers and have a greater impact.
“Bad content is only a small part of the billions of videos on the platform,” Ma Hong wrote. He added that YouTube removes nearly 10 million videos every quarter, most of which haven't even gotten 10 views.
Facebook recently made a similar argument regarding the content of its platform. The social network released a report last week that showed that the most popular posts were comics and other non-political content.
Due to incorrect information, YouTube deleted 1 million videos
Given criticism of the handling of the coronavirus and misinformation about vaccines, the company has argued that misinformation about vaccines is not the type of content most users see.
During the pandemic, Facebook and YouTube have been under special scrutiny for their disinformation policy. Both platforms have over a billion users, which means that even a small piece of content can have a profound impact.
So far, both systems have refused to reveal details about how misinformation about vaccines and health spreads, or how many users see the information.
Mahone also said that eliminating disinformation is only one aspect of the business approach. The Company is also committed to obtaining more information from reliable sources and limiting the spread of videos containing harmful misinformation.