YouTube: New Health Policy to Combat Medical Misinformation
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YouTube unveiled its new health policy on Tuesday, aimed at addressing the spread of medical misinformation across its platform.
In an effort to establish a robust and enduring policy framework, the company emphasizes the importance of striking a delicate balance. This entails eradicating harmful content while safeguarding the space for open debates and discussions.
The overarching objective is clear: YouTube aims to ensure that, although medical guidance can evolve with new insights, the platform remains a bastion of accurate information.
Particularly, the company is committed to refraining from becoming a medium for disseminating information that could potentially jeopardize individuals’ well-being.
In pursuit of this goal, YouTube is streamlining its myriad medical misinformation guidelines into three overarching categories: prevention, treatment, and denial.
These categories will be enforced across specific health conditions, treatments, and substances. The litmus test for content adherence will be its alignment with local health authorities or the globally recognized World Health Organization (WHO).
YouTube’s evaluation process for content will consider factors such as the magnitude of public health risk associated with a topic, official health guidance from authoritative sources, and the susceptibility of the subject to misinformation.
Content contravening health authority guidance on the prevention, transmission, and treatment of specific health conditions will be expunged from the platform.
Among the topics to witness content removal due to contradicting information are the coronavirus, reproductive health, cancer, as well as content centered around harmful substances and practices.
Through this new health policy, YouTube is taking a significant step toward enhancing the reliability and accuracy of health-related content on its platform.
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