In a bid to tackle the sensational and popular conspiracy theory videos that keep taking precedence over genuine content, YouTube is enlisting the help of Wikipedia.
In the future, videos that claim moon landings to be fake, for example, will be followed by “Information cues” directly underneath the video about the moon landing. This content will be sourced from Wikipedia.
“When there are videos that are focused around something that’s a conspiracy, ” announced YouTube’s CEO at SXSW, “and we’re using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia — then we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event.”
“Reliable” Source of Info
YouTube may have good intentions with this move, however, Wikipedia itself may not be a reliable source of info, as we all know from the Calibri font fiasco from last year.
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But that is just touching the tip of the iceberg. Officials from the Wikimedia Foundation weren’t told about the plans by YouTube in advance.
Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director, Katherine Maher, has since tweeted:
And frankly, we don’t want you to blindly trust us. Sure, we’re mostly accurate – but not always! We want you to read @Wikipedia with a critical eye. Check citations! Edit and correct inaccurate information! You can’t do that in a simple search result.
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) March 14, 2018
Lack of Control?
It isn’t clear whether YouTube is in complete control over the situation. Recently, it hired around 10,000 employees to moderate and flag offensive content on its site, while also blocking advertisement from popular conspiracy theorist channel Infowars.
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But the haphazardness of these recent moves indicates it is shooting arrows blindly rather than following a proper plan.
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