YouTube will remove content that promotes “cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective” or which “discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment,” the video platform announced today, The Verge reported.

According to The Verge, the enforcement comes as YouTube is attempting to streamline its medical moderation guidelines based on what it’s learned while attempting to tackle misinformation around topics like covid-19, vaccines, and reproductive health.

YouTube posted on the YouTube Official Blog an Inside YouTube titled: “A long term vision for YouTube’s medical misinformation policies”. It was written by Dr. Garth Graham and Matt Halperin. Here is part of the YouTube blog post:

“In the years since we began our efforts to make YouTube a destination for high-quality health content, we’ve learned critical lessons about developing Community Guidelines in line with local and global health authority guidance on topics that pose serious real-world risks, such as misinformation on COVID-19, vaccines, reproductive health, harmful substances, and more. We’re taking what we’ve learned so far about the most effective ways to tackle medical misinformation to simplify our approach for creators, viewers, and partners…”

“…Moving forward, YouTube will streamline dozens of our existing medical misinformation guidelines to fall under three categories – Prevention, Treatment, and Denial. These policies will apply to specific health conditions, treatments, and substances where content contradicts local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Here’s what the framework will look like:

Prevention misinformation: We will remove content that contradicts health authority guidance on the prevention and transmission of specific health conditions, and on the safety and efficacy of approved vaccines. For example, this encompasses content that promotes a harmful substance for disease prevention.

Treatment misinformation: We will remove content that contradicts health authority guidance on treatments for specific health conditions, including promoting specific harmful substances or practices. Examples include content that encourages unproven remedies in place of seeking medical attention for specific conditions, like promoting cesium chloride as a treatment for cancer.

Denial misinformation: We will remove content that disputes the existence of specific health conditions. This covers content that denies people have died from COVID-19.

YouTube continued: Starting today, and ramping up in the coming weeks, we will be removing content that promotes cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective, or content that discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment. This includes content that promotes unproven treatments in place of approved care or as a guaranteed cure, and treatments that have been deemed harmful by health authorities. For instance, a video that claims “garlic cures cancer,” or “take vitamin C instead of radiation therapy” would be removed.

CNN reported that YouTube’s Dr. Garth Graham said that cancer treatment fits YouTube’s updated medical misinformation framework because the disease poses a high public health risk and is a topic prone to frequent misinformation, and because there is a stable consensus about safe treatments from local and global health authorities.

YouTube says its restrictions on cancer treatment misinformation will go into effect today, and enforcement will ramp up in the coming weeks. The company has previously said it uses both human and automated moderation to review videos and their context.

In my opinion, it is good that YouTube wants to takedown videos that are posting misinformation about cancer treatments. People seeking information about cancer treatment on YouTube should not have to see the videos that are clearly misinformation.

YouTube’s recommendations are leading young kids to videos about school shootings and other gun-related content, according to a new report, Engadget reported. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit watchdog group, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is “pushing boys interested in video games to scenes of school shootings, instructions on how to use and modify weapons” and other gun-centric content.

The researchers behind the report set up four new YouTube accounts posing as two 9-year-old boys and two 14-year-old boys. All accounts watched playlists of content about popular video games, like Roblox, Lego Star Wars, and Grand Theft Auto. The researchers then tracked the accounts’ recommendations during a 30-day period last November.

“The study found that YouTube pushed content on shootings and weapons to all of the gamer accounts, but at a much higher volume to the users who clicked on the YouTube-recommended videos,” the TTP writes. “These videos included scenes depicting school shootings and other mass shooting events; graphic demonstrations of how much damage guns can inflict on a human body; and how-to guides for converting a handgun to a fully automatic weapon.”

In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson pointed to the YouTube Kids app and its in-app supervision tools, which “create a safer experience for tweens and teens” on its platform, Engadget reported.

“We welcome research on our recommendations, and we’re exploring more ways to bring in academic researchers to study out systems,” the spokesperson said. “But in reviewing this report’s methodology, it’s difficult for us to draw strong conclusions. For example, the study doesn’t provide context of how many overall videos were recommended to the test accounts, and also doesn’t give insight into how the test accounts were set up, including whether YouTube’s Supervised Experiences tools were applied.”

The Associated Press reported that the test accounts simulated two nine-year-olds who both liked video games. The accounts were identical, except that one clicked on the videos recommend by YouTube, and the other ignored the platform’s suggestions.

According to The Associated Press, the account that clicked on YouTube’s suggestions was soon flooded with graphic videos about school shootings, tactical gun training videos, and how-to instructions on making firearms fully automatic. One video features an elementary school-age girl wielding a handgun; another showed a shooter using a .50 caliber gun to fire on a dummy head filled with lifelike blood and brains. Many of the videos violate YouTube’s own policies against violent or gory content.

The Tech Transparency Project provided key points from its report:

• YouTube recommended hundreds of videos about guns and gun violence to accounts for boys interested in video games, according to a new study.
• Some of the recommended videos gave instructions on how to convert guns into automatic weapons or depicted school shootings.
• The gamer accounts that watched the YouTube-recommended videos got served a much higher volume of gun-and shooting-related content.
• Many of the videos violated YouTube’s own policies on firearms, violence, and child safety, and YouTube took no apparent steps to age-restrict them.
• YouTube also recommended a movie about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to minor accounts, the study found.

According to the report, between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30, YouTube pushed 382 real firearms videos to the nine-year-old engagement account – an average of more than 12 per day. The videos includes graphic demonstrations of what high-powered weapons can do to a human torso or human head. YouTube served far fewer weapons videos – 34 – to the gamer of the same age who did not watch the recommendations.

During the same 30-day period, the report stated, YouTube served 1,325 real firearms videos to the 14-year-old engagement account – an average of more than 44 per day. The videos features shooting scenes and “how-tos” for using or modifying firearms. By contrast, the 14-year-old account that did not click on the recommended content got 172 weapons videos.

In my opinion, parents who have children between the ages of 9 and 14 should take steps to prevent their children and teens from seeing a flood of weapon-related videos. YouTube recommends the YouTube Kids app, and its in-app supervision tools.