One Million COVID-19 Hoax Content Successfully Exterminated YouTube

YouTube is working to speed up the process of removing videos with misinformation. (photo credit: Christian Wiediger / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A report came from YouTube's Chief Product Officer, Neal Mahon. He said YouTube had removed more than a million videos of malicious COVID-19 misinformation since February 2020.

Mahon also shared statistics in his blog post outlining how YouTube is dealing with misinformation on its platform.

“Misinformation has moved from marginal to mainstream. No longer confined to the closed world of Holocaust deniers or truths 9 to 11, it now extends to every aspect of society. Sometimes it rips the community at high speed," said Mahon as quoted from Engadget, Thursday, August 26.

At the same time, Mahon argues that such bad content only accounts for a small part of YouTube's overall content.

“Bad content only represents a small part of the billions of videos on YouTube, around 0.16 to 1.18 percent of the total views, but it turns out to be content that violates our policies,” said Mahon.

Mahon added, compiled from VOA News, YouTube is working to speed up the process of removing videos with misinformation as well as sending them from an authorized source. The platform removes nearly 10 million videos per quarter and most have been viewed less than 10 times.

"Quick removal will always be important but we know it's not enough. The most important thing we can do is increase the good and reduce the bad. When people are now looking for news or information, they get results that are optimized for quality, not how sensational the content is," Mahon explained.

The statement by the Google-owned video platform comes as other social media companies have come under fire from political leaders in the United States for failing to stem the spread of misinformation and malicious information and disinformation about viruses and other topics.

Not only YouTube, but Facebook has recently made a similar argument about content on its platform. The social network published a report last week claiming that the most popular posts were memes and others were non-politicians.

Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform has since faced criticism for its handling of COVID-19 and misinformation about vaccines. The company argues that vaccine misinformation does not represent the type of content most of their users see.

For your information, both platforms have over a billion users, which means even a small piece of content can have a wide impact. Both platforms have so far declined to disclose details of how the vaccine and health misinformation spread or how many users were affected.