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July 11, 2018

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YouTube to ensure veracity of news

Google鈥檚 YouTube says it is taking several steps to ensure the veracity of news on its service by cracking down on misinformation and supporting news organizations.

The company said on Monday it will make 鈥渁uthoritative鈥 news sources more prominent, especially in the wake of breaking news events when misinformation can spread quickly.

At such times, YouTube will begin showing users short text previews of news stories in video search results, as well as warnings that the stories can change. The goal is to counter the fake videos that can proliferate immediately after shootings, natural disasters and other major happenings. For example, YouTube search results prominently showed videos purporting to 鈥減rove鈥 that mass shootings like the one that killed at least 59 in Las Vegas were fake, acted out by 鈥渃risis actors.鈥

In these urgent cases, traditional video won鈥檛 do, since it takes time for news outlets to produce and verify high-quality clips. So YouTube aims to short-circuit the misinformation loop with text stories that can quickly provide more accurate information. Company executives announced the effort at YouTube鈥檚 New York offices.

Those officials, however, offered only vague descriptions of which sources YouTube will consider authoritative. Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said the company isn鈥檛 just compiling a simple list of trusted news outlets, noted that the definition of authoritative is 鈥渇luid鈥 and then added the caveat that it won鈥檛 simply boil down to sources that are popular on YouTube.

He added that 10,000 human reviewers at Google 鈥 so-called search quality raters who monitor search results around the world 鈥 are helping determine what will count as authoritative sources and news stories.

Alexios Mantzarlis, a Poynter Institute faculty member who helped Facebook team up with fact-checkers, said the text story snippet at the top of search results was 鈥渃autiously a good step forward.鈥

But he worried what would happen to fake news videos that were simply recommended by YouTube鈥檚 recommendation engine and would appear in feeds without being searched.


 

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