YouTube Updates Guidelines to Combat ‘Medical Misinformation’
By Movieguide® Contributor
YouTube has updated its creator guidelines, cracking down on videos that share “medical misinformation” or harmful medical advice.
“As medical information – and misinformation – continuously evolves, YouTube needs a policy framework that holds up in the long term, and preserves the important balance of removing egregiously harmful content while ensuring space for debate and discussion,” said a blog post from the company explaining the changes.
“While specific medical guidance can change over time as we learn more, our goal is to ensure that when it comes to areas of well-studied scientific consensus, YouTube is not a platform for distributing information that could harm people,” the blog post continued.
To better streamline its content policy, YouTube will classify a video as medical misinformation and remove it from the platform if it falls under one or more of three categories: Prevention, Treatment or Denial.
YouTube defined “prevention misinformation” as “content that contradicts health authority guidance on the prevention and transmission of specific health conditions.” This includes media that questions the “safety and efficacy of approved vaccines.”
“Treatment misinformation” is defined as “content that contradicts health authority guidance on treatments for specific health conditions,” such as “promoting specific harmful substances or practices.”
Meanwhile, “denial misinformation” addresses “content that disputes the existence of specific health conditions.”
“These policies will apply to specific health conditions, treatments, and substances where content contradicts local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO),” the blog post added.
While these guideline changes allow YouTube to silence or support certain narratives, the company claims these policies will only be applied in specific conditions where the company feels it has a moral obligation.
YouTube insists that the policies will not be used to kill discussion and debate within the medical world and that there are allowances to break these new guidelines if there is a significant public interest to keep the content on the platform.
“For example, a video of a public hearing or comments made by national political candidates on the campaign trail that disputes health authority guidance,” won’t get removed even though they violate the guidelines.
“We may also make exceptions for personal testimonies or content that discusses the results of a specific medical study,” the blog post added.
YouTube implemented these changes because people often turn to the internet for answers after receiving medical news. The platform claims these changes will keep people in this situation safe.
Furthermore, YouTube has realized that oftentimes these people are not looking for medical advice but for support. Common search questions include: “How did other people live with this? Does it ever get better? How do I support my loved one through this? What meaning can I make of it?”
To better address these needs, YouTube is also adding a feature that highlights personal stories about certain medical experiences.
“To start, we are focusing on queries related to cancer, and mental health topics like anxiety and depression, but these topic areas will expand over the coming months,” YouTube explained.
The company clarified that these featured testimonies must comply with their new medical misinformation policies.
Movieguide® previously reported on YouTube misinformation guidelines:
On Thursday, YouTube’s PR Twitter account announced that the company will censor videos containing abortion-related “misinformation,” from content providing unsafe abortion instructions to videos on abortion-related topics broadly.
YouTubeInsider posted, “Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies.”
The account explained that “Content that promotes harmful substances, treatments, or substances that present an inherent risk of severe bodily harm or death” will be censored.
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