YOUTUBE WILL LINK DIRECTLY TO WIKIPEDIA TO FIGHT CONSPIRACY THEORIES
On Tuesday, however, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki detailed a potential solution. YouTube will now begin displaying links to fact-based content alongside conspiracy theory videos.
Wojcicki announced the new feature, which she called "information cues," during a talk with WIRED editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Here’s how it will work: If you search and click on a conspiracy theory video about, say, chemtrails, YouTube will now link to a Wikipedia page that debunks the hoax alongside the video. A video calling into question whether humans have ever landed on the moon might be accompanied by the official Wikipedia page about the Apollo Moon landing in 1969. Wojcicki says the feature will only include conspiracy theories right now that have "significant debate" on the platform.
Merely placing links to factual information alongside videos won’t solve the company’s moderation problems wholesale. For one, as Zeynep Tufekci at The New York Times and others have pointed out, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is often how users end up seeing conspiracy theories in the first place. Wikipedia in particular can also be edited by anyone, and has had its own reliability issues in the past.
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-will-link-directly-to-wikipedia-to-fight-conspiracies/?CNDID=52793295&mbid=nl_031418_daily_list1_p3