A great threat

In the beginning, Youtube has been created just to let people share their favorite videos or songs. However, while growing bigger and bigger, the platform gradually has so much more amusement and genuine threat sneaks on it as well.

Washington DC-based Pew Research Center recently carried out a research for Youtube which involved nearly 4,600 grown-ups in the US. Around 35% of surveyed people said that Youtube is a great source of instructional and educational videos. Approx. 13% said that it is where they come to stay informed.

The problem is that the video platform is containing a great amount of fake news or disturbing content.

Estimated there are 60% of individuals on YouTube experienced recordings involving individuals in threat or in disturbing circumstances. 66% of YouTube aficionados said they've experienced recordings that are clearly phony or false. That is a major issue when the greater part of the platform's clients are between 18 to 29 years of age. Children are also being threatened with these low-quality contents. 61% of parents who let their kids watch Youtube reported that they have seen videos that are inappropriate for kids.

On the off chance that YouTube was only for amusement, that probably won't be such a large amount of an issue. However, as mentioned above, a lot of us is taking this platform as a primary, reliable news source.

Take an occurrence prior this year, when a most-watched video recorded on the landing page is about a fake, horrible conspiracy theory involving victims of a school shooting. We also shouldn't forget about the Elsagate scandal in which Youtube created great outrage and fear of truly disturbing contents for children.

How are they dealing with this?

Youtube is working on developing solid policies for its platform. However, the huge size of content space and the great number of independent uploaders aren't helping at all.

As far as it matters for its, the company says it's endeavoring to watch out for channels that disregard its policies. For instance, they expelled more than 17 million videos in only 6 first months of 2018. Most of these were detected by their AI system, which seems to be improving and becoming more reliable.

We can hope that in the next couple of years, their AI system will be efficient enough to resolve this big problem.