YouTube can improve its work to combat misinformation, CEO Susan Wojcicki said, touting the company’s progress over the past six years, even as lies about the COVID-19 pandemic and elections have surfaced on the platform.
“There will be incentives for other people to create disinformation,” Wojcicki said Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he addressed everything from the war in Ukraine to his perspectives on Roe v. Wade. take a step forward and make sure we perceive what they are. “
Alphabet Inc. ‘s Google-owned video streaming serviceit has long been questioned through lies and conspiracies. Part escaped scrutiny despite the problematic content that appeared daily on the platform. In April, a report from the City University of New York and Dartmouth College found that YouTube had allowed a green audience envious of other people to seamlessly and continuously access extremist content. on the platform.
Wojcicki said he hadn’t noticed this report, “but in fact there are a lot of other reports that give us a smart score there. “As a source, YouTube is only missing between 10 and 12 videos that violate content according to 100,000 videos consistent with perspectives on the platform, according to its most recent research.
Wojcicki also described the difficulties YouTube faces in moderating global content crises, adding the war against Ukraine. Holocaust to be denied. Earlier this year, Wojcicki said, the video site expanded that policy to ban content that encouraged denial or trivialization of the Russian-Ukrainian war, blocking channels connected to state-backed Russian media RT and Sputnik across Europe.
But YouTube continues to work in Russia to spread independent data in the country, Wojcicki said. “The average citizen in Russia can get the same loose data that you can get here from Davos,” he said.
What the video platform won’t give up, Wojcicki said, is its commitment to free speech. In response to a query about his perspectives on the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling. A century ago, Wojcicki said he personally believes women deserve to have the right to decide when to become mothers.
“Removing a law and a right that we’ve had for almost 50 years will be a huge setback for women, but that’s my non-public opinion,” Wojcicki said. make sure we allow a wide diversity of reviews where everyone has the right to express their point of view, as long as they adhere to the rules of our community. “