YouTube is stepping up its effort to fight the spread of conspiracy theories on its platform, adding information from Wikipedia to run alongside conspiracy theory videos.
{mosads}The company will now show text from Wikipedia and other third-party sources next to relevant YouTube videos propagating conspiracy theories. The video giant will roll out the feature in the coming months, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said at the South By Southwest tech conference on Wednesday.
“Our goal is to start with a list of conspiracies around the internet where there’s a lot of active discussion,” she said, according to Bloomberg.
Google’s video streaming platform has faced criticism following the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., when conspiracy theory videos proliferated on the platform. Media investigations have shed light on YouTube’s difficulties preventing its algorithm from promoting false information.
Following a report by The Guardian in February, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has been a vocal critic of major internet companies, characterized YouTube’s algorithms as “at best, intrinsically flawed in optimizing for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content.”