YouTube purges 1 mn videos with dangerous Covid misinformation

Google-owned YouTube has removed 1 million videos related to dangerous Covid-19 misinformation, like false cures or claims of a hoax, since February 2020.

According to YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, if we only focus on what we remove, we’re missing the massive amount of content that people actually see.

“Bad content represents only a tiny percentage of the billions of videos on YouTube (about .16-.18 percent of total views turn out to be content that violates our policies),” he said in a blog post on Wednesday.

“Misinformation has moved from the marginal to the mainstream. No longer contained to the sealed-off worlds of Holocaust deniers or 9-11 truthers, it now stretches into every facet of society, sometimes tearing through communities with blistering speed,” he emphasised.