YouTube to crack down on conspiracy videos: Site says it will no longer in user recommendations

 YouTube claims it will stop recommending conspiracy videos. 

Following complaints over the number of unwelcome videos appearing in recommendations, the Google-owned site says it plans to try and banish them.

It says  ‘borderline’ videos that come close to violating community guidelines or those which ‘misinform users in a harmful way.’ will now be excluded.

‘We’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.’ 

YouTube says the decision affects less than 1 percent of videos – but this will still impact millions of clips.

‘We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users,’ YouTube said.

However, it will not ban the videos.

‘To be clear, this will only affect recommendations of what videos to watch, not whether a video is available on YouTube.’   

The change relies on a combination of machine learning and real people, google said.

‘We work with human evaluators and experts from all over the United States to help train the machine learning systems that generate recommendations.’

However, only US recommendations will be changed. 

‘This will be a gradual change and initially will only affect recommendations of a very small set of videos in the United States. 

‘Over time, as our systems become more accurate, we’ll roll this change out to more countries. 

‘It’s just another step in an ongoing process, but it reflects our commitment and sense of responsibility to improve the recommendations experience on YouTube.’