Since February 2022 and the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Youtube tackles disinformation carried out by pro-Kremlin outlets.
Social platforms have a lot to do in their fight against fake news, and YouTube today gives us some figures to understand its measures in this area.
Thousands of channels and content removed to fight misinformation
The streaming site says it has removed 70,000 videos and 9,000 channels since February 2022. This period corresponds to the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces.
YouTube specifically attacks videos that spread pro-Kremlin discourse on the reasons for the conflict with its Ukrainian neighbor and that qualify the operation as “ liberation mission aimed at suppressing the so-called Nazis who populate the country.
YouTube has already stopped the monetization of Russian videos, but the content, guided by the official discourse of the Kremlin, continues to circulate on the platform. Russia is also the fifth largest group of users, with no less than 99 million individual users recorded in January 2022.
Hard moderation
Google’s streaming service, however, indicates that it strictly follows its moderation and usage rules, as Neal Mohan, product manager at YouTube, points out: ” We have a major violent events policy, and that applies to things like major violent events denial: everything from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And, of course, what is happening in Ukraine is a major violent event. Thus, we have used this policy to take unprecedented measures. »
However, YouTube seems to be having a hard time tracking all the accounts spreading fake news about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and even seems overwhelmed by the volume of content published in recent weeks.
Despite these excesses, the platform remains active in Russia and claims that it is one of the only ways for Russians to obtain free and independent information, while the traditional media relay the word of the Kremlin. For the moment, the Russian government does not plan in the short term to put a stop to YouTube, as it was able to do with other social platforms like Facebook.
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Source : Gizmodo
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