YouTube is relaxing its policies on moderation and instructing its reviewers that they should not remove any content that may violate their rules, even if it’s in its system. “public interest,” According to a report from The New York Times. The platform is said to have adjusted their policies on an internal level in December. They gave examples such as medical misinformation or hate speech.
Training material is viewed and absorbed by participants. Times, YouTube says reviewers should now leave up videos in the public interest — which includes discussions of elections, ideologies, movements, race, gender, sexuality, abortion, immigration, censorship — if no more than half of their content breaks its rules, up from one quarter. According to the website, this is a step that expands upon a change made before the 2024 US electionThe community’s guidelines allow content by political candidates to remain online even if it violates them under its exception For educational, documentary, scientific and artistic (EDSA) content.
The platform also instructed moderators to remove any content that violated its terms. “freedom of expression value may outweigh harm risk,” Take borderline videos directly to the manager, rather than removing them. Times reports.
We regularly update our Community Guidelines YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell in an email to The Verge. Bell also added that EDSA exemptions are the only exceptions. “apply to a small fraction” There are videos available on this platform.
“This practice allows us to prevent, for example, an hours-long news podcast from being removed for showing one short clip of violence,” Bell said. “We regularly update our guidance for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion and content (for example emergence of long, podcast content) that we see on the platform, and the feedback of our global creator community.”
According to the Times, YouTube gave reviewers examples of the way it had implemented its new policy. One video contained coverage of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s covid vaccine policy changes — under the title “RFK Jr. Delivers SLEDGEHAMMER Blows to Gene-Altering JABS” — and was allowed to violate policies surrounding medical misinformation because public interest “outweighs the harm risk,” The Times. The video is no longer available, however the Times Says the logic behind this “unclear.”Another example is a 43 minute video on Trump’s Cabinet appointees which violated YouTube harassment rules by using a slur against a transgender individual, yet was still left online because there was only one violation. Times reports.
YouTube told users to remove a South Korean video that talked about putting the former President Yoon Suk-Yeol on a guillotine. The company said that this was a violation of YouTube’s terms. “wish for execution by guillotine is not feasible.”
Update, June 9th: A statement has been added from YouTube.
