Popular video site YouTube has recently announced its intentions on cracking down on users who post pirated videos by removing adverts for accounts with fewer than 10,000 viewers.
The video site, which is owned by online giant Google, will begin to block advertising from appearing on videos and channels that have not yet reached the 10,000-viewer threshold in a bid to stop users profiting from inappropriate and stolen content.
The news comes after a number of major brands pulled business away from the platform amid fears that they were funding illegal activity – including terrorism – due to a failure in policing videos posted onto the site.
Companies such as McDonalds, Tesco, RBS and even the UK government were among those who removed adverts from YouTube after it was found that they were appearing alongside inappropriate content.
As a result of this discovery, Google was forced to issue an apology last month after these large firms withdrew their adverts and after MPs accused the platform of “profiting from hatred”.
A statement from the company said that its new policy should have no effect on those earning a living from posting content on YouTube and that these changes will not have any effect on money earned up until the introduction of the new policy at the end of last week.
YouTube explained that the new threshold would give the company enough data to be able to determine a channel’s validity. Furthermore, it stated that the threshold would also ensure that aspiring creators would face a minimal impact.
These changes coincide with another Google announcement that will see the company further police the content appearing on its websites. It has introduced a new “Fact Check” feature within its iconic search engine that will help to prevent the spreading of fake news – something that has become a much-discussed problem for online news outlets for the last few months.
Google’s Fact Check will use a scale of ratings, which include “true” and “mostly false” in a co-operative effort with a number of independent fact checker firms such as Snopes and PolitiFact. Google reiterates that the fact checks are not the company’s own and are being introduced so that users can make informed judgements on topical subjects.
Furthermore, the California-based enterprise says that it is looking to employ staff to proactively search for inappropriate content instead of waiting for other users to flag it up. As the amount of content uploaded every minute is far beyond human capabilities, it is also developing AI capabilities to assist.
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