YouTube to remove supremacist, hateful content and limit misinformation

YouTube on Wednesday announced that it will be removing and prohibiting supremacist, hateful content on the platform in an ongoing attempt to clean itself up.

Videos which claim that “a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status”, will be taken down, including those that suggest events like the Holocaust didn’t take place.

“We recognize some of this content has value to researchers and NGOs looking to understand hate in order to combat it, and we are exploring options to make it available to them in the future,” the company also noted.

YouTube will be further limiting “borderline” content and “harmful misinformation” as well, by promoting “authoritative content” in recommendations.

This means that videos from legitimate sources will be favoured over fake news and content that threatens to violate the platform’s policy.

“Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can’t run ads on their channel or use other monetization features,” YouTube also said.

Hopefully, such steps can help eliminate the increasing amount of misleading, cruel content that can be found online.

Feature image: Memeburn