Social-Media
YouTube Plans to Cut Recommended Hindi Videos Spreading Conspiracy Theory
YouTube is planning to add Hindi support to its system that reduces the recommendation and exposure of material that could propagate conspiracy theories, said the executive. The change is specifically designed for the Indian market. It will be an extension of the company's move that has allowed the reduction of video recommendations that could misinform viewers in harmful ways, which it calls "borderline" content. In turn, YouTube is seeking to resolve consumer issues by restricting the dissemination of conspiratories and disinformation on its website.
Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan told Gadgets 360 via email that YouTube had already begun to reduce borderline content recommendations in English and is planning to launch its Hindi support this quarter.
YouTube began reducing content recommendations spreading conspiracy theories in January last year, such as videos promoting a miracle cure for a serious illness or claiming the earth is flat. However, this development was initially limited to the US market, although it was later extended to Australia, Japan and New Zealand. The update also reached the initial non-English language markets in December, including Brazil, France , Germany, Mexico and Spain.
In addition, YouTube claimed it saw an average 70 percent drop in the watch time of such content coming from unsubscribed US recommendations.
Mohan told reporters during a video conference earlier Friday that over the last year or so, YouTube had made more than 30 improvements to its recommendation algorithms to eliminate ambiguous content that is not necessarily against its policies but could be misleading misinformation in some other way and may have an effect on the viewers' lives.
Language is a key barrier for YouTube to limit videos that are created to attract clicks and views on the platform and plot misinformation, especially in India.
However, while answering a question posed during the conference by Gadgets 360, Mohan said that the content rating team of YouTube already covers several languages across the world.
One of my major goals is to keep increasing and deepening the language scope for all of our raters, he said. We are also working very closely with organizations in India on our content policies to ensure that our policies and enforcement guidelines reflect the specific conditions in India so that we can act quickly on content that could be breached on our platform.
