During an interview with tech and lifestyle creator iJustine, new YouTube CEO Neal Mohan reiterated the company’s commitment to suppressing content that he deems to be “harmful misinformation.”
Mohan made the comments when iJustine asked him about artificial intelligence (AI) making things up and whether YouTube has been doing anything to help “stop these false narratives.”
“We have invested very heavily in recognizing that what happens on YouTube impacts the real world and vice versa,” Mohan said. “And what that means is really living up to our responsibility to be a platform that isn’t, you know, spreading harmful misinformation or what have you.”
Mohan’s comments on misinformation echo his previous comments on the topic and YouTube’s years-long stance that so-called misinformation should be censored.
Related: New YouTube CEO Neal Mohan supports censorship of “misinformation,” boosting “authoritative” sources
Before becoming YouTube CEO, Mohan said that stopping the spread of misinformation and “violative content” was the video sharing platform’s number one priority.
And in its previous transparency reports, YouTube has confirmed that it often deletes hundreds of thousands of videos each quarter because they’re deemed to contain misinformation.
Not only has Mohan committed to maintaining YouTube’s policy of censoring videos based on the buzzword misinformation but he’s also previously admitted that YouTube changes its determination of what misinformation is based on the current guidance of health authorities.
These health authorities got it wrong many times during the pandemic. But under this policy, YouTube creators that share something disputing the narrative of health authorities which is later proven to be true, risk being censored until the health authorities admit the truth.
