SoylentNews

RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

On June 5th, 800lb streaming gorilla YouTube announced in a post [googleblog.com] on its official blog that it is going to be

Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube

by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.

Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.

Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices

In January, we piloted an update of our systems in the U.S. to limit recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation

We’re looking to bring this updated system to more countries by the end of 2019. Thanks to this change, the number of views this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 50% in the U.S. Our systems are also getting smarter about what types of videos should get this treatment, and we’ll be able to apply it to even more borderline videos moving forward. As we do this, we’ll also start raising up more authoritative content in recommendations

Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies

we are strengthening enforcement of our existing YouTube Partner Program policies. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can’t run ads on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat.

In an article [theverge.com] discussing this, Silicon Valley reporter Casey Newton of The Verge notes that this "is expected to result in the removal of thousands of channels across YouTube."

The crackdown goes into effect today and will "ramp up" over the next few days.

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