YouTube Redirects Searches For Extremist Videos To Anti-Terrorism Playlists

Given that anyone can upload a video onto YouTube, sometimes this has resulted in users uploading copyrighted videos, pornographic videos, and videos with offensive content, most of which are taken down rather swiftly or prevented from being uploaded in the first place, but somehow, some way, such videos do manage to find their way back.

However it seems that in the future should anyone try searching for extremism videos on YouTube, they will instead be redirected to anti-terrorism playlists. As reported by Tubefilter, this is part of The Redirect Method, which is part of Google’s plan and strategy to try and quash extremist ideologies across its platforms.

According to YouTube, they will be expanding on this feature where it will cover a wider set of search queries in other languages besides English. It will also use machine learning to dynamically update the search query terms to ensure that the feature stays on top of the latest search topics/trends, and that they will also be working with NGOs to help develop new content that will counter “violent extremist messaging at different parts of the radicalization funnel”.

While there are probably a ton of other places on the internet where one can find such extremist content, at the very least one of the biggest video platform will not be one of them, or at least that’s the plan.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: YouTube