Fact-checking group pushes for increased Youtube censorship citing misinformation

A fact-checking organization is calling on YouTube to censor more videos for “misinformation,” citing that their videos have fewer viewers than the channels they want censored as one of the main reasons.

As detailed by Summit News, the call for censorship was made during Global Fact 9, a conference organized by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

“As an international network of fact-checking organizations, we monitor how lies spread online — and every day, we see that YouTube is one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide. This is a significant concern among our global fact-checking community,” wrote the IFCN previously in a letter to YouTube.

Speaking at the conference, the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, Angie Holan complained that fact-checking organizations struggle to gain traction because few people have shown any interest in watching their content on YouTube.

“YouTube does not seem to raise accurate, credible information in its algorithms. We have had a lot of experience with YouTube making videos of fact-checking content. It doesn’t seem to do very well,” said Holan. “I think most news organizations are extremely frustrated with your platform.”

Brandon Feldman, the news and civics partnerships director of YouTube assured the group that it was  doing more to elevate more “authoritative sources.”

Summit News’ Paul Joseph Watson explains that on the platform, elevating authoritative sources “manifests itself in the form of content from mainstream news networks and regime institutions appearing at the top of search results, with dissenting narratives buried deep down the list, if they appear at all.”

Fact-checking organizations maintain a pseudo-monopoly on content permitted on social media platforms. On Facebook, news organizations like the New York Post have been censored for reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop due to “fact checks” performed on the reports, which falsely claimed that the reports were the result of Russian disinformation.

The lab leak of the COVID-19 coronavirus, which is widely understood to have originated from a biological laboratory in Wuhan, China – now accepted by the World Health Organization as the most likely point of origin – was previously censored after being declared a “conspiracy theory.” 

“Whenever stories emerge that are hugely damaging to the regime and the military-industrial complex, fact-checkers are weaponized to bury them by falsely labeling such stories ‘misleading’ or hoaxes even if they are completely authentic,” explains Watson. “This then serves to justify their censorship by social media algorithms and the targeted banning and de-platforming of anyone who tries to amplify them.“