YouTube announced<\/a> the initiative on Monday, and says it aims to make \u201cit easier to find quality news\u201d<\/em> and improve \u201cthe news experience on YouTube.\u201d<\/em> The initiative forms part of a wider, $300 million Google program aimed at \u201chelping journalism thrive in the digital age.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In the coming weeks, videos posted about breaking news events will be accompanied with a link to carefully vetted news article about the events, as well as a reminder that breaking news can rapidly change. YouTube will also highlight breaking news videos from reputable news organizations on its homepage, and recommend that viewers watch similar videos following the ones they were watching.<\/p>\n With the left-right divide in America widening, the challenge for YouTube is deciding what sources count as reputable. Among those vetted by YouTube are CNN and Fox News. CNN has been slated and derided as \u2018fake news\u2019 by President Trump and others on the right, while CNN President Jeff Zucker called Fox a \u201cpropaganda machine\u201d<\/em> earlier this year.<\/p>\n When Facebook announced plans to rank news sources<\/a> by \u201ctrustworthiness\u201d<\/em> and \u201cdial up the intensity\u201d<\/em> of news suppression this May, it enlisted the help of a host of news organizations to define what \u201ctrustworthy\u201d<\/em> means. However, all but two of the over 20 organizations enlisted leaned to the political left.<\/p>\n The only US outlet mentioned in YouTube\u2019s announcement is Vox Media, a left-wing \u201cexplainer\u201d<\/em> website. YouTube has also revealed that one of its \u201ctrusted flaggers\u201d<\/em> of objectionable content is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that focuses solely on \u201cright-wing extremism.\u201d<\/em> The SPLC has been forced to retract several articles<\/a> over the past few months, and pay a $3.75 million compensation<\/a> to a think-tank it mischaracterized as anti-Muslim.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n YouTube has attempted to subtly influence its viewers\u2019 news diet before. Earlier this year, the platform began labeling videos from news outlets that receive government funding. The labels are visible to viewers in the US, and affect outlets like PBS, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and RT. The labeling of RT is in line with parent company Google\u2019s decision last year to de-rank<\/a> RT articles from search results, making alternate viewpoints that much harder to find.<\/p>\n Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google\u2019s parent company Alphabet, said at the time that the move was aimed at replacing \u201cbad speech\u201d<\/em> with \u201cgood speech,\u201d<\/em> but critics called it \u201ca form of censorship\u201d<\/em> that defied \u201call logic and reason.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Under the new rules, videos on long-running conspiracy theories \u2013that the moon landings were faked, for instance\u2013 will now be accompanied by a link to a relevant Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica article challenging the claims.<\/p>\n “There are going to be counter points of view, and there\u2019s going to be [videos] where people who have a conspiratorial opinion are going to express them,”<\/em> said YouTube\u2019s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan. “What I think we can do is, instead of telling users what to think, give them as much information as possible, so that they can make those decisions themselves.”<\/em><\/p>\n Mohan denies that YouTube\u2019s new features amount to censorship, and viewers will still be able to find a wealth of content on the platform.<\/p>\n Many independent and citizen journalists who have relied on YouTube in years past fear that the new policy will favor mainstream and establishment media outlets at their expense. They have already been impacted by YouTube\u2019s changes to its content policy last August, which\u00a0flagged videos<\/a>\u00a0that discussed\u00a0\u201ccontroversial\u201d<\/em>\u00a0topics as unsuitable for advertisers and de-monetized, depriving their creators of much-needed ad revenue.<\/p>\n Tim Pool, a political moderate, described the demonetization as applied with\u00a0\u201cno discernible pattern\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and said\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not the first and I won\u2019t be the last person to be affected by this.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Like this story? Share it with a friend!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" YouTube will invest $25 million in funding \u201cquality journalism\u201d on its platform. The initiative will aim to provide context and to promote \u2018reputable\u2019 sources; but there are doubts as to what, exactly, that might mean. YouTube announced the initiative on Monday, and says it aims to make \u201cit easier to find quality news\u201d and improve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":362888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-368863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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