YouTube Tool Linked The Fire At Notre Dame Cathedral To The 9/11 Attacks By Mistake

On April 16, YouTube’s tool designed for preventing fake news incorrectly linked videos concerning the Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris to the attacks which took place on 9/11/2011 in the United States. After that, the video-sharing website must apologize for its “wrong call.”

On April 15, the countless number of images of the medieval cathedral under fire were spread on newscasts. Many YouTube channels replayed these newscasts; however, the details on the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks suddenly appeared in the “information panels” of boxes under the videos.

After that, YouTube explained that its fact-check tool gave a false sign when offering text relating to the events of 9/11 in a lot of videos updating the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral.

In an interview with ABC News, a representative from YouTube said,

The fact-check tool was first introduced in 2018 as a solution to refrain from spreading conspiracy theories on the Internet, including some revolving around the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11.

The built-in algorithm is reportedly designed to provide information panels, as well as links to other sources from third parties such as Wikipedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica while playing videos on a variety of subjects concerning conspiracy theories.

The mistake occurred only one month after the renowned video-sharing company and Facebook spent many hours identifying and blocking videos of a mass shooting that took place at a mosque in New Zealand. Most of these videos were posted time after time.

The information panels led to a lot of conjecture without basis on the video-sharing website implying that the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral was caused by terrorists.

Some Twitter users believed that Muslim terrorists were the real culprits who sparked the fire. As per the authorities in France, they stated ongoing renovations caused the fire, and in this case, terrorists were innocent.