In a recent appearance by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki at the South by Southwest Festival, she suggested that YouTube is countering the conspiracy-related videos that have been spreading like wildfire on the platform — including videos telling viewers that high school senior and Parkland, Fl. survivor David Hogg is an actor.
Specifically, Wojcicki outlined YouTube’s plans to add “information cues,” like links to Wikipedia pages that debunk garbage content for viewers. (Very strangely, no one had told Wikipedia about this plan.)
But the platform is going to have do much better than that, suggests a new Business Insider report that says YouTube Kids has a huge problem with conspiracy videos, too. To wit, it’s showing its young viewers videos that teach them the nonsensical, including “that the world is flat, that the moon landing was faked, and that the planet is ruled by reptile-human hybrids,” according to BI’s own first-hand findings.
In fact, when BI searched for “UFO” on YouTube Kids — and what kid isn’t interested in learning more about UFOs? — one of the top videos to appear was a nearly five-hour-long lecture by professional conspiracy theorist David Icke, who covers everything in the clip from “reptile human bloodlines,” to the Freemasons, who he credits with building everything from the Statue of Liberty to Las Vegas to both Christianity and Islam. (The Freemasons also killed President John Kennedy, he tells viewers.).
Business Insider says YouTube removed the videos from YouTube Kids after its editorial team contacted the company, and that YouTube issued the following statement: “The YouTube Kids app is home to a wide variety of content that includes enriching and entertaining videos for families. This content is screened using human trained systems. That being said, no system is perfect and sometimes we miss the mark. When we do, we take immediate action to block the videos or, as necessary, channels from appearing in the app. We will continue to work to improve the YouTube Kids app experience.”
That’s not going to be good enough for parents who are paying attention. Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist who previously led product at YouTube and has a young daughter, may have summed it up best in a tweet that he published earlier this afternoon, writing that “when you create and market an app to kids, the level of care and custodial responsibility you need to take is 100x usual. Clean it up or shut it down pls.”
YouTube has been reluctant to tinker with is recommendation algorithm because its “main objective is to keep you consuming YouTube videos for as long as possible,” Wired noted in a story published this week. Indeed, says the outlet, despite a recent uproar about all the conspiracy theory content, YouTube still doesn’t have clear rules around when whether these videos violate its community guidelines, which cover bullying, hate speech, graphic violence, and sexually explicit content.
Wojcicki said during her festival appearance that “People can still watch the videos, but then they have access to additional information.”
Hopefully YouTube plans to do a lot better than that — especially when it comes to its younger viewers. As it is, this editor doesn’t allow her kids to watch YouTube Kids without strict supervision out of concern for what they might see. At this point, we’d be surprised if parents at YouTube feel much differently.
from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2GDZnXR
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