YouTube on Thursday said they have a clear policy for 2024 Lok Sabha election where they remove the content of misinformation as quickly as possible and their approach is comprehensive.
Speaking in the CyFy 2022 event virtually. Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, YouTube, and Senior Vice-President, Google, said, “Our approach is comprehensive. Our approach is making sure that we have clear policies around election integrity or potentially misinformation related to elections. How to vote, where to vote, candidate liability, all of those types of things which come into play during elections.” He also said, “We have policies where we remove that type of content as quickly as possible. We have context, policies around the violence, incitement to violence, hate speech, etc., to making sure that elections happen in a peaceful manner so that people will feel safe when they’re voting.”
Responding to a question that YouTube reach has become an integral part of our daily lives, even in politics, he said, “How does a platform that was beneficial for so many creators and for other economic and communication purposes navigate with this highly polarized and political future of 2024 election?” He added, ‘YouTube is a place where that discourse is happening, which happens around election cycles that happens throughout the year. It is a place where people come and share ideas, share their perspective, share differing opinions, in terms of political outcomes they desire, in terms of policy outcomes they desire.
He also said, “Millions of times over and over on YouTube on a regular basis and maintaining that open platform and making sure it’s a place where that type of dialogue interaction can happen is of paramount importance.’
Mohan said, “We have learned over time by being present in terms of numbers of opinion, in terms of a number of elections going back to the last national election in India, but obviously also 2020 election here in the US. There’s an election going on right now in Brazil, all over the world. There are obviously multiple elections happening every day, we learn that every year, we learn from all of them, and we will put all that learning to use when it comes to 2024. Whether it’s the US elections, India Election or other elections that are happening all over the world.”
“Our approach is comprehensive. Our approach is making sure that we have clear policies around election integrity for potentially misinformation related to elections, how to vote, where to vote, candidate liability, all of those types of things which come into play during elections. We have policies where we remove that type of content as quickly as possible,” he said.
He added, “We have context, policies around the violence, incitement to violence, hate speech etc., to making sure that elections happen in a peaceful manner so that people will feel safe when they’re voting. We don’t just stop there with our policies. As you know, a lot of what happens on platforms like YouTube is about the type of content that is recommended. We have a number of products and you’ll see them in the context of the Indian election, where we serve up things like information panel, so when users come to YouTube, they get accurate information from election authorities about voting. In the US we were those panels when the results were certified by the state here in the US, so that we raise up authoritative content that users are looking for.”
Responding to a question on how does YouTube make sure that it is not a place for organised crime, terrorism, etc., Mohan said, “We have comprehensive approach, we have policies, we use a combination of pretty sophisticated machine learning technology and artificial intelligence that continues to get better and we have thousands of highly-trained individuals all over the world that are enforcing our policies against criminal organisations, against terrorist organisations, that content from those organisations is not allowed on our platform.”
“We’re not perfect by any means, but we endeavour to remove that content as quickly as possible. But, we are also always investing more and more in our technology so that we can catch it even more quickly. So, we do things like being able to detect firearms,” he said. (ANI)
