"Committed to enforcing policies consistently in India," YouTube on curbing fake news

"YouTube’s misinformation policies prohibit content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users (beyond clips taken out of context) and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm," Ishan John Chatterjee, Director, India at YouTube said to DH.

YouTube on Wednesday (August 9) celebrated the 15th anniversary of launching its localised version of the multimedia platform in India.

Since the 90s and 2000s, TV serials and weekend movies have been the only form of wholesome entertainment at home for lot of us in India, but for the past decade and a half, things have changed so much that there are hundreds of dedicated channels to cater to specific age groups.

Propelled by affordable Internet services in India, YouTube, and other platforms have grown big too.

YouTube since its debut in late 2000, too has evolved over the years of being just a platform for news channels and entertainment channels particularly related to music, to stream their feed in India. Also, several groups of tech-savvy people too used YouTube to share educational content with the public.

But, with the launch of affordable Android phones and even cheaper data tariffs, YouTube become a really big platform. Compared to Google search, demand for video-based content such as tips on tech-related stuff, food recipes, agriculture techniques to improve the yield, prank videos, and vlogging has gained big traction in India.

During the Covid-19 outbreak-induced lockdowns for more than a year, there was a dearth of new TV serials and movies, guess what YouTube came to the rescue. It not only offered a livelihood to content creators but also YouTube became a go-to platform for entertainment for billions of people globally and in India. While millions of people had to work on smartphones and laptops at home to get the projects completed, some faced issues. Thanks to YouTube, many were able to find workarounds and fix them to get their work done without having to leave home.

With the passing of time, YouTube now also supports short-form videos with lucrative ad revenue sharing with content creators. The company also organises several programmes in multiple cities across India to interact with the creators and also help them get information on the latest tools and support to improve the quality of the content and also be able to reach a wider audience beyond the borders.

Whilst there are so many positive things to talk about on YouTube, there are issues of the spread of misinformation and fake videos using deep fake tech. Some people in order to make some quick bucks, used to release fake content to mislead people. YouTube and even other platform owners, were taken to task by the government to curb such things on their respective platforms.

Having said that YouTube (& Google) has done a pretty good job of controlling such things. It has set up a robust screening process that not only makes good use of the new-age artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithm but also real people to scrutinise the content.

"YouTube’s misinformation policies prohibit content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users (beyond clips taken out of context) and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm. We remove content that violates this policy using a combination of machine learning and human review," Ishan John Chatterjee, Director, India at YouTube said to DH.

"We may allow content that provides sufficient EDSA context, such as basic facts about what’s happening in the content. For example, letting viewers know in the video, audio, title, or description that the voices in the video are fake," Chatterjee added.

With an ever-changing world, YouTube says it is improving means to curb misinformation before it hurts anybody or a community.

"We (YouTube) continue to work to improve on the processes and technology that help us enforce our policies, including against potential threats related to manipulated content on our platform," Chatterjee concluded.

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