YouTube continues to crack down on medical misinformation
YouTube is revising its guidelines for dealing with medical misinformation. As a first step, misinformation about treatments for cancer, one of the leading causes of death worldwide, will be removed from the platform starting Tuesday.
The streaming platform has been working for many years to provide a platform for reliable health-related content, according to a YouTube statement on Tuesday. Based on previous findings on how to most effectively combat medical misinformation, YouTube is therefore simplifying its own approach to creators, users and partners.
To do this, YouTube is unifying a variety of existing YouTube medical misinformation policy along the three categories of "prevention", "treatment" and "denial". These guidelines are applied to content on specific health conditions, treatments, and substances that contradict information provided by local health authorities or WHO.
To determine whether content falls under these guidelines, YouTube evaluates publicly available recommendations from health authorities, verifies whether content poses a high risk to public health, and whether misinformation frequently circulates on the subject.
The goal of YouTube's actions is to make the rules more understandable and the framework for deciding whether certain diseases or health conditions fall under the guidelines more transparent.
As part of this, YouTube will immediately begin removing content that promotes cancer treatments that have been shown to be harmful or ineffective. It will also remove content that discourages users from seeking professional medical treatment.
For more information on the topic, see the blogpost "A Long-Term Vision for YouTube's Medical Misinformation Policies.".
