YouTube is taking extensive measures to combat “medical misinformation” on the platform.
The platform is expanding its censorship policies into three categories: Prevention, Treatment, and Denial, according to an official blog post.
“These policies will apply to specific health conditions, treatments, and substances where content contradicts local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO),” the blog post reads.
“To determine if a condition, treatment or substance is in scope of our medical misinformation policies, we’ll evaluate whether it’s associated with a high public health risk, publicly available guidance from health authorities around the world, and whether it’s generally prone to misinformation.”
Content with “prevention misinformation” will be removed if it contradicts health guidance on vaccines.
Content with “treatment misinformation” will be removed if it promotes “harmful substances or practices.”
Content with “denial misinformation” will be removed if it “disputes the existence” of a particular health condition.
“This covers content that denies people have died from COVID-19,” the post says.
Reporting from The Daily Caller:
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing YouTube and its parent company, Google, for allegedly violating his free speech, according to a complaint filed Aug. 2. YouTube has removed Kennedy’s videos because of its “vaccine misinformation” policies on multiple occasions, according to the complaint. Since “YouTube does not allow people to say anything ‘that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19,’” this means the government sets the medical censorship guidelines, Kennedy’s lawsuit alleges.
