YouTube Sets New Policies to Curb Extremist Videos - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/business/youtube-terrorism.html
By allowing anyone to upload videos to YouTube, Google has created a thriving video platform that appeals to people with a wide range of interests. But it has also become a magnet for extremist groups that can reach a wide audience for their racist or intolerant views. Google has long wrestled with how to curb that type of content while not inhibiting the freedom that makes YouTube popular.
Companies throughout the tech industry are working on how to keep platforms for user-generated content open without allowing them to become dens of extremism. Like YouTube, social media companies have found that policing content is a never-ending challenge. Last week, Facebook said it would use artificial intelligence combined with human moderators to root out extremist content from its social network. Twitter said it suspended 377,000 accounts in the second half of 2016 for violations related to the “promotion of terrorism.”
YouTube came under fire this year when The Times of London and other news outlets found examples of brands that inadvertently funded extremist groups through automated advertising — a byproduct of YouTube’s revenue-sharing model that provides content creators a portion of ad dollars.
Brands such as AT&T and Enterprise Rent-A-Car pulled ads from YouTube. Google responded by changing the types of videos that can carry advertising, blocking ads on videos with hate speech or discriminatory content. Google also created a system to allow advertisers to exclude specific sites and channels in YouTube and Google’s display network.