YouTube revises medical misinformation policy

YouTube will give high priority to removing content related to misinformation on Cancer treatment, proven to be harmful or ineffective.

With the advent of social media apps, people have an open platform to express their feelings about their day-to-day life. Also, there are also those self-proclaimed influencers who give opinions on how to improve personal wealth, fitness, health, and other every other aspect of people's life. Some without doing any due diligence just do what they say and lose their money. Many have even taken extreme steps to lose weight and got hospitalised, while some have died too.

Taking note of such issues, social media platforms, particularly during the covid-19 outbreak have taken initiatives to curb misinformation related to health advisories.

Now, YouTube has decided to make a more stringent policy against medical misinformation.

Also, it has announced to streamline dozens of existing medical misinformation guidelines to fall under three categories – Prevention, Treatment, and Denial.

To start with prevention, YouTube will begin removing 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 instance, content that promotes unproven medicine or disease prevention.

Also for treatment, YouTube will take the same action as stated above to prevent people and influencers from offering unscientific methods to treat an ailment.

Also, if influencers are found to promote false information on a medical condition, they too will face sanction and the videos will be taken down. For instance, we have seen people sharing unverified reports that swine flu or covid-19 or any harmful infection did not kill people, but a propaganda run by a few companies to make money through vaccines. So, such content will be taken off and those people will be put under sanction or banned from the platform too.

YouTube has also revealed that it will also give high priority to removing content related to misinformation on Cancer treatment, proven to be harmful or ineffective, or content that discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment.

"When cancer patients and their loved ones are faced with a diagnosis, they often turn to online spaces to research symptoms, learn about treatment journeys, and find community. Our mission is to make sure that when they turn to YouTube, they can easily find high-quality content from credible health sources," reads a joint statement by Dr. Garth Graham and Matt Halprin Director and Global Head of Healthcare and Public Health Partnerships, and VP and Global Head of Trust and Safety.

To ensure people get to watch genuine health-related content, YouTube will publish a playlist of engaging, informative cancer-related videos from a range of authoritative sources.

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