Social Cleansing

Business insider finds that YouTube's algorithms are still sucking people deep down into whirlpools of misinformation, however, anti-vaccination messages aren't among those messages.

Unfortunately, those same algorithms aren't smart enough to detect the baby in the soiled bathwater, and seem to be defenestrating the lot, blocking misinformation as well as videos debunking anti-vaccination misinformation. YouTuber Stephen Woodford was one who found himself scooped up in the cleansing. He recently posted a video to his YouTube channel Rationality Rules called ‘The Covid-5G Conspiracy – Debunked'. It was taken down and he was sent a letter explaining why. Woodford made the letter he received from YouTube public, highlighting the reasoning given; “we think it violates our medical misinformation policy”. You can see Woodford's response here.

It has to be acknowledged that the sheer volume of misinformation being uploaded couldn't possibly be interrogated without the assistance of code, but given the vast resources available to the platform, one wonders if they couldn't afford to spend more money on humans to vet content to mitigate against counterproductive issues like this.

It is concerning that this cleansing of conspiracies is also quieting skeptical voices on the platform. As Woodford himself said, “Well, I've got the message. Don't expose conspiracy theories, don't expose medical misinformation”.