YouTube Announces New Policies to Target Medical Misinformation

YouTube earlier this week announced new policies to target medical misinformation, a move that comes as pressure builds over Big Tech collusion and censorship.

“In the years since we began our efforts to make YouTube a destination for high-quality health content, we’ve learned critical lessons about developing Community Guidelines in line with local and global health authority guidance on topics that pose serious real-world risks, such as misinformation on COVID-19, vaccines, reproductive health, harmful substances, and more,” Dr. Garth Graham, head of YouTube Health, said in a blog post Tuesday.

“We’re taking what we’ve learned so far about the most effective ways to tackle medical misinformation to simplify our approach for creators, viewers, and partners.”

The platform, owned by Google, said its new policies “will apply to specific health conditions, treatments, and substances where content contradicts local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”

YouTube’s medical misinformation policy already prohibits false claims about vaccines and abortions.

Its updated medical misinformation policy framework will consider content in three categories: prevention, treatment and denial, per the post.

“To determine if a condition, treatment or substance is in scope of our medical misinformation policies, we’ll evaluate whether it’s associated with a high public health risk, publicly available guidance from health authorities around the world, and whether it’s generally prone to misinformation,” Graham said.

Graham said the policy is designed to preserve “the important balance of removing egregiously harmful content while ensuring space for debate and discussion.”

A judge last month prohibited several federal agencies and officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies about “protected speech,” a decision called “a blow to censorship” by one of the Republican officials whose lawsuit prompted the ruling.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote that the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.'”