YouTube to Outsource Truth to Wikipedia
YouTube will accompany conspiracy theory videos with links to Wikipedia to better inform viewers, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference on Tuesday in Austin, Texas.
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Wikipedia is a crowdsourced digital encyclopedia — anyone can edit it — and editors sometimes engage in fierce partisan battles over divisive topics. It remains unclear how YouTube will ensure factual accuracy of suggested pages. The reliability of Wikipedia’s information has been disputed over the years, as detailed on the encyclopedia’s page about its own reliability and its catalogue of hoaxes that have appeared there.
Similarly unclear is how “informational cues” might work for breaking news events, where subjects involved may not have a complete or even partial Wikipedia presence.
Melanie Ehrenkranz (Hacker News):
It’s unclear why YouTube didn’t feel the need to ask or inform Wikimedia about its plans ahead of this week’s announcement. That’s a pretty crucial piece of information not to share. And given that YouTube has failed at efficiently moderating conspiracy theories on its platform, it might have been smart to consult with Wikimedia about how to best use its resources to fight misinformation. Of course, maybe YouTube would’ve learned that showing users a Wikipedia link isn’t the best way to fight hoaxes.
See also: Ryan Mac.
