Organizations have asked the company to adopt at least four measures to reverse this situation.
YouTube is “one of the world’s leading online misinformation and misinformation channels” in the world, according to more than 80 fact-checking organizations that have asked the company to take at least four steps to reverse this situation.
In a letter to YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki, verification organizations from 40 countries refer to videos posted on YouTube that “have caused real harm in everyday life” and yet have passed under the radar. of current company policies.
These cases are proof that the policies implemented by YouTube to combat disinformation are “insufficient” and “do not work”, consider the verification groups, among them, the Spanish Maldita and Newtral; the Mexican Political Animal-The Hound; ColombiaCheck, or the Venezuelan Cotejo.info.
A situation that is “even worse” in non-English speaking countries and in the so-called Global South, where company policies “are exercised even less,” the letter says.
Faced with this situation, they urge Wojcicki to implement at least four measures, including a commitment to transparency on how disinformation travels on the platform and publicly disclose its policies to address it, including the use of artificial intelligence.
Rather than deleting videos, fact-checkers are asking YouTube to focus on providing the proper context, which they believe can be done by “establishing meaningful and structured collaboration” with fact-checking organizations.
The signatories reject what they consider YouTube’s attempts to frame the entire debate as “a false choice” between deleting videos or not and say that “the available evidence” indicates that providing verified information is more effective than removing content.
In this way, “freedom of expression is preserved while mitigating the risks of harm to life, health, security and democratic processes.”
Another request is that the platform act against repeat offenders who constantly produce content marked as disinformation and “prevent their videos from being recommended or promoted by the company’s algorithms.”
In addition, they urge that these efforts be expanded to languages other than English and that country- and language-specific data be provided, as well as effective transcription services.
YouTube due to “inaction or policies that do not work” is allowing this misinformation, but also the existence of groups that have organized, especially during the pandemic, the head of Public Policy and Institutional Development of the Spanish verification group Maldita told the media .is, Carlos Hernández.
Thus, the letter indicates, YouTube allows its platform “to be used as a weapon by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others, and to organize and raise funds.”
The verification groups want the company to “take steps towards transparency,” Hernández said, since they do not know much about what the platform does or how it decides what is or is not misinformation.
The verifiers express in their letter their willingness to engage with YouTube to put these demands into practice and that the platform really do everything possible to prevent misinformation and false information from becoming “weapons against its users and society in general” . (I)
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