YouTube follows in the potentially dangerous steps of Goal and X (before twitter) relaxing —So Content moderation policies. New internal training materials exposed The New York Times It instructs moderators to leave videos live if up to half their content violates YouTube policies, an increase from the fourth part. The platform introduced the new policy in mid -December one month later President Trump He was re -elected.
New guidelines reflect what YouTube considers to be “public interest”. These areas include discussing or discussing elections, movements, race, gender, immigration and more. “Recognizing that the definition of public interest is always evolving, we update our orientation for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion we see on the Platform Avui,” said Nicole Bell, YouTube spokesman, The New York Times. “Our goal is still the same: to protect free expression on YouTube while mitigating evil damage.”
When Engadget contacted YouTube, Bell shared more context about the decision. “We regularly update community guidelines to adapt to the content we see on YouTube. As examples, at the beginning of the year, we withdrew our remaining COVID-19 policies and added new protections related to game content,” said Bell. “”The New York Times The article is about a separate aspect of our approach: our long -term practice of applying exceptions to our content policies that serves the public interest or that has an EDSA context (educational, documentary, scientific, artistic). These exceptions apply to a small fraction of videos on YouTube, but they are vital to ensuring that there is significant content. This practice allows us to avoid, for example, a duration of duration of duration to show a short clip of violence. We regularly update our orientation for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion and content (for example, the appearance of long content, podcast) that we see on the platform and the feedback of our global creative community. Our goal is still the same: to protect free expression on YouTube. “”
According to the platform, the platform has removed 22 percent of videos due to hateful and abusive content than last year. It is not clear how many videos were reported or would have been removed under the previous guidelines.
YouTube, supposedly told the moderators To now the value of maintaining the content if it is a debate between freedom of expression and risk. For example, they were shown a video called “Rfk Jr. Sludgehammer pounds the slopes that alter the gene “falsely stated that covid vaccines can change people’s genes. However, YouTube told moderators that the public interest” exceeds the risk of damage “and that the video must be kept up to date.
Other videos that were allowed to remain online included one with a slur aimed at a transgender person and one in which a commentator discussed a graphic disappearance of the former southern president -Ion Suk Yeol.
Update, June 9, 2025, 12:27 ET: This item has been updated to include the YouTube statement at Engadget.
