Posts
They
haven’t even begun and already I am noticing the difference. Many
of the great news sources I have subscribed to are already
unavailable to me.
What
is ‘reputable’ news? YouTube plans to decide for you
RT,
10
July, 2018
YouTube
will invest $25 million in funding “quality journalism” on its
platform. The initiative will aim to provide context and to promote
‘reputable’ sources; but there are doubts as to what, exactly,
that might mean.
YouTube
announced the initiative on Monday, and says it aims to make “it
easier to find quality news” and improve “the news experience on
YouTube.” The initiative forms part of a wider, $300 million Google
program aimed at “helping journalism thrive in the digital age.”
In
the coming weeks, videos posted about breaking news events will be
accompanied with a link to carefully vetted news article about the
events, as well as a reminder that breaking news can rapidly change.
YouTube will also highlight breaking news videos from reputable news
organizations on its homepage, and recommend that viewers watch
similar videos following the ones they were watching.
With
the left-right divide in America widening, the challenge for YouTube
is deciding what sources count as reputable. Among those vetted by
YouTube are CNN and Fox News. CNN has been slated and derided as
‘fake news’ by President Trump and others on the right, while CNN
President Jeff Zucker called Fox a “propaganda
machine” earlier
this year.
When
Facebook announced plans to rank
news sources by “trustworthiness” and “dial
up the intensity” of
news suppression this May, it enlisted the help of a host of news
organizations to define what “trustworthy” means.
However, all but two of the over 20 organizations enlisted leaned to
the political left.
The
only US outlet mentioned in YouTube’s announcement is Vox Media, a
left-wing “explainer” website.
YouTube has also revealed that one of its “trusted
flaggers” of
objectionable content is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group
that focuses solely on “right-wing
extremism.” The
SPLC has been forced to retract
several articles over
the past few months, and pay
a $3.75 million compensation to
a think-tank it mischaracterized as anti-Muslim.
YouTube
has attempted to subtly influence its viewers’ news diet before.
Earlier this year, the platform began labeling videos from news
outlets that receive government funding. The labels are visible to
viewers in the US, and affect outlets like PBS, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and
RT. The labeling of RT is in line with parent company Google’s
decision last year to de-rank RT
articles from search results, making alternate viewpoints that much
harder to find.
Eric
Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company
Alphabet, said at the time that the move was aimed at replacing “bad
speech” with “good
speech,” but
critics called it “a
form of censorship” that
defied “all
logic and reason.”
Under
the new rules, videos on long-running conspiracy theories –that the
moon landings were faked, for instance– will now be accompanied by
a link to a relevant Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica article
challenging the claims.
"There
are going to be counter points of view, and there’s going to be
[videos] where people who have a conspiratorial opinion are going to
express them," said
YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan. "What
I think we can do is, instead of telling users what to think, give
them as much information as possible, so that they can make those
decisions themselves."
Mohan
denies that YouTube’s new features amount to censorship, and
viewers will still be able to find a wealth of content on the
platform.
Zuckerberg plans ‘Supreme Court’ body to police #Facebook on.rt.com/92dx
Many
independent and citizen journalists who have relied on YouTube in
years past fear that the new policy will favor mainstream and
establishment media outlets at their expense. They have already been
impacted by YouTube’s changes to its content policy last August,
which flagged
videos that
discussed “controversial” topics
as unsuitable for advertisers and de-monetized, depriving their
creators of much-needed ad revenue.
Tim
Pool, a political moderate, described the demonetization as applied
with “no
discernible pattern” and
said “I’m
not the first and I won’t be the last person to be affected by
this.”
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