More than 80 fact-checking organizations from 46 countries on Wednesday sent a letter to YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki, urging the company to take effective action to combat disinformation on the YouTube-owned platform. Google.
One of the suggested measures is for YouTube to establish structured partnerships with checkers and take responsibility for systematically investing in independent information verification initiatives around the world.
Other steps identified as priorities are providing transparency on how disinformation spreads on the platform, taking action against repeated violators and extending efforts to languages ​​other than English.
In the document, the signatory organizations ask for a meeting with Wojcicki to discuss the suggestions and a collaboration with the platform. “We hope you will consider implementing these ideas for the public good and to make YouTube a platform that truly does its best to prevent misinformation and rumors from being used as a weapon against its users and society.”
Among the more than 80 organizations that sign the letter, there are two Brazilian representatives —Aos Fatos and Agência Lupa—, in addition to vehicles from other Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia.
Also endorsing the document are organizations from the US, including The Washington Post’s checking unit, and from nations such as Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, India, Myanmar, the Philippines and Australia.
“All these agencies came to the same conclusion: that YouTube is one of the main channels of disinformation in the world and that the current policies that the platform says it is applying are not working”, says Carlos Hernández-EchevarrÃa, from the Spanish outlet Maldita.es .
In the opinion of the signatories, the platform’s moderation policy should be more focused on providing users with context, beyond the decision to remove or not certain content.
“This can only happen if there is meaningful and structured collaboration between fact-checkers and YouTube, with the platform taking responsibility and systematically investing in independent fact-checking efforts around the world,” the letter reads.
In late 2019, the site announced that it would begin displaying fact-checking panels for certain searches, in line with vehicle-type verification. The rating used by YouTube comes from an open source platform called Schema.org ClaimReview.; in it, the agencies insert the data of their investigation through an HTML code, allowing different vehicles to identify checked contents.
Organizations see the measure as insufficient. Today, when the panel appears, it refers to the search term as a whole; for checkers, the checks should appear next to the specific video. They further say there is little transparency about how the platform uses verified content.
“The issue is not primarily financial, it is primarily discussing YouTube’s mode of operation, which privileges the dissemination of disinformation content and which is totally contradictory to the discourse that there is a partnership with fact-checkers [checadores de fatos]”, says Natália Leal, executive director of Lupa.
In a statement, YouTube said it has invested in policies and products in all countries in which it operates “to connect people to qualified content, reduce the spread of borderline information and remove videos that violate policies” from the platform.
According to the company, the site maintains “borderline recommended disinformation consumption significantly below 1% of all views on YouTube.” “We are always looking for meaningful ways to improve and will continue to strengthen our work with the fact-checking community.”
Unlike Meta, a group that Facebook is part of, YouTube does not have an established program of partnerships with checking agencies.
The letter from these outlets also points out that the platform must act against repeat offenders, suggesting that the algorithm stop recommending videos from channels that repeatedly have content classified as misinformation or rumor. “Especially those who monetize this content on and off the platform.”
Last year, amid an intense campaign of disinformation about the electoral process and the polls, Minister LuÃs Felipe Salomão, from the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), determined the suspension of transfers to pages of certain Bolsonarist profiles and channels. According to a report sent by Google to the agency, the amount paid since 2019 to those investigated for disseminating fake news totaled US$ 3 million, as shown by the leaf.
Under current rules, videos that violate community guidelines are removed. In case of violations, the platform has a three-warning system: if the channel receives all three within 90 days, it is permanently removed; each notice expires 90 days after it is issued.
Checkers also consider that YouTube needs to commit to transparency about how disinformation spreads on the platform. In this sense, they point out as possible measures the support for independent research on the reach and impact of disinformation campaigns.
The signatories of the letter also advocate expanding efforts to languages ​​other than English, as well as providing country- and language-specific data. The only data presented by country in the company’s transparency reports today refers to total removals.
As shown by leaf, a YouTube rule that provides for the removal of content with baseless allegations of voter fraud was, until the first half of 2021, restricted to the US and later it was expanded only to Germany.
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