Among the changes being considered, according to chief product officer Neil Mohan, and updates that would effectively "break" video sharing features with "borderline content" are among the changes being considered, according to an engadged report.
The change would be a major shift for the platform, though it's not clear if the company would actually take such a step, and Mohan described the possibility at length in a blog post outlining the company's approach to preventing misinformation from spreading viral.
In the post, he noted that so-called border content — videos that don't quite go beyond the limits of their removal policies but don't necessarily want to recommend them to people — can be particularly difficult to deal with, as YouTube aims to remove these videos from its recommendations, but no It can still go viral when shared on other platforms, and he wrote: “One possible way to address this is to disable the share button or break the link on videos we already restrict in recommendations, effectively meaning you can't include a borderline video or Link to it on another site
Mohan added that the company is still grappling with whether or not it should take this more aggressive approach, and we're grappling with whether blocking posts might go too far in restricting viewer freedoms, and said an alternative approach could be to add an "interstitial show before it can." The viewer can't see an embedded or linked borderline, letting them know that the content may contain false information."
And if YouTube blocks the sharing of certain videos, it would be an exciting move for the platform, which has repeatedly cited statistics claiming that less than 1% of views on borderline content come from recommendations, but critics have pointed out that this does not fully address the problem, and fact-checkers have cited Disinformation researchers have identified YouTube as a major carrier of disinformation, and last month a group of 80 fact-checking organizations signed an open letter to the video platform urging them to do more to stop harmful disinformation and disinformation.
The YouTube executive hinted at other changes coming as well, and said that the company is also considering adding “additional types of labels to search results” when there is an evolving situation, and reliable information may not be available, and the company is also looking to strengthen its partnerships with “experts and NGOs.” around the world” and investing in technology to detect “hyper-local misinformation with the ability to support local languages.”