Review: “YouTube Magic Dust”: How America’s Second-Largest Social Platform Avoids Controversy

The update marks a replacement for the social media giant, which streams more than a billion hours of content every day. Like its peers Facebook and Twitter, the company has long resisted overly strict content, arguing that keeping a platform open is but as corporations are increasingly criticized by regulators, lawmakers and normal users for contributing to social ills, adding skepticism about vaccines, YouTube is turning back the policies it has clung to for months.

“You create this potted soil and when you unfold it, it doesn’t go away, they just migrate,” said Hany Farid, a computer science professor and disinformation researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “This is not the one you have We had 18 months to think about those issues, we knew the vaccine was coming, why wasn’t it political from the beginning?

YouTube didn’t act faster because it focused on incorrect information, particularly about coronavirus vaccines, said Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president for global acceptance as true and safety. When he found that incorrect claims about other vaccines were contributing to fears about coronavirus vaccines, he prolonged the ban.

“Developing sound policies takes time,” Halprin said. We seek to publish a comprehensive policy, applicable with coherence and that responds adequately to the challenge. “

Facebook and YouTube have spent a year hitting covid-related misinformation.

Mercola, a businessman of medicine of choice, and Kennedy, a lawyer and son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who has been a face of the anti-vaccine motion for years, have said in the afterlife that they are not opposed to all vaccines. , however, I believe that data on the dangers of vaccines are removed.

Facebook banned incorrect information about all vaccines seven months ago, Mercola and Kennedy’s pages remain online on the social media site, and their Twitter accounts are also active.

In an email, Mercola said he censored and said, without presenting evidence, that the vaccines had killed many people. Kennedy also said he censored. ” There is no example in history where censorship and secrecy have a complex democracy or public health,” he said. in an email.

More than a third of the world’s population has been vaccinated and vaccines have proven safe.

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter banned incorrect information about the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic, but false accusations continue to plague all 3 platforms. Social media is also very connected, and YouTube serves as a library of viral videos on Twitter or Facebook.

This dynamic is overlooked in discussions about coronavirus misinformation, said Lisa Fazio, an associate professor at Vanderbilt College who studies disinformation.

“YouTube is the vehicle for much of this incorrect information. If you see incorrect information on Facebook or other places, most of the time it’s YouTube videos. Our verbal exchange doesn’t come with YouTube when it should,” Fazio said.

Social media corporations have hired thousands of moderators and used high-tech text popularity algorithms and symbols to verify incorrect information. YouTube has gotten rid of more than 133,000 videos for spreading incorrect information about coronaviruses, Halprin said.

There are also millions of people with valid considerations about the medical system, and social media is a position where they will ask genuine questions and make explicit their concerns and fears, anything that corporations don’t need to suppress.

One of the founders of the anti-vaccine movement has made millions of sales of herbal fitness products.

In the past, company executives have worked to remove what they call “limited” videos from their advisory algorithms, allowing other people to locate them with quick searches but not necessarily advertise them in other people’s new feeds. authorized fitness videos, such as those made through hospitals and medical schools, at the most sensitive study locations on more sensitive fitness-related aspects.

But those strategies haven’t stopped the spread of incorrect information against coronavirus and vaccines. More than a year after YouTube said it would remove incorrect information about coronavirus vaccines, the accounts of six of the 12 anti-vaccine activists, known through the nonprofit Center. to counter digital hate as much of the anti-vaccine content shared on social media, they were easily searchable and were still posting videos. Wednesday’s replacement policy means many of them will now be eliminated.

Once communities grow and link on major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, occasionally, even if they are kicked out of those sites, Farid said. Other influencers who are banned from YouTube can move on to some other service like Telegram or Gab, which have fewer content restrictions, and ask their subscribers to join them.

“These conspiracy theories don’t just disappear when they prevent you from being on YouTube,” Farid said. “You created the community, you created the poison, and then they just move to the platform. “

The anti-vaccine movement dates back to long before the pandemic. False clinical claims that vaccines in the formative years caused autism in the 1990s contributed to the growing number of people refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated, which had not been unusual for decades. Activists spread their posts on Facebook parent teams and YouTube videos.

How Wellness Influencers Are Driving the Anti-Vaccine Movement

When the pandemic hit and vaccines suddenly became an applicable topic for everyone, not just parents of young children, many sought answers online. Influencers like Mercola, Kennedy, and fitness attorney Erin Elizabeth Finn were able to cheer on their audience. Vaccine influencers, in addition to Mercola, also sell herbal fitness products, giving them a monetary incentive to publicize skepticism about classical medicine.

The anti-vaccine motion now also includes teams as varied as conspiracy theorists who think former President Donald Trump remains the valid president, and some wellness influencers who see vaccines as non-herbal ingredients that will poison the human body. they have undergone rigorous and have proven to be scientifically very effective and safe.

The company is also expanding its cadres to bring more videos from official resources to the platform, such as the National Academy of Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic, said Garth Graham, YouTube’s global director of fitness and public fitness partnerships. with clinical data in front of other people before they fall into the burrow of anti-vaccine content.

“There’s a way, not from us, but a way from other researchers about fitness’s bad shape that has shown that the faster you can get a form before they form an opinion, the better,” Graham said.

Getting reliable data in front of other people at first can help, however, factual videos struggle to compete for other people’s attention with those who throw up wrong data, Fazio said. “If you need to invent something, you can make it as convincing as you need. “

YouTube’s new policy will still allow other people to make claims based on their own non-public experience, such as when a mother talks about the side effects her child experienced after receiving a vaccine, Halprin said. Successes will also be allowed, he said.

Nicki Minaj Tweets Coronavirus Vaccine Conspiracy Theory, Losing Kindness in Fight Against Misinformation

“We will remove claims that vaccines are harmful or cause many effects on fitness, whether vaccines cause autism, cancer, infertility or involve microchips,” Halprin said. “At least hundreds” of YouTube moderators are running, in particular, with medical misinformation, he added. The policy will apply in all dozens of languages in which YouTube operates.

Still, there are dozens of examples of videos going viral, even if they explicitly violate corporate rules. Sometimes YouTube detects them after they have been reported through news or normal viewers, and have already accumulated thousands or millions of views.

“As always, Satan is in the details. Fazio said. ” But I think it’s a step in the right direction. “

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