Video giant YouTube is being strongly criticised once again after a video attacking one of the Florida school shooting survivors briefly topped the service’s trending charts.
The Guardian reports that a video alleging that survivor David Hogg was a “crisis actor” – as in, somebody paid (presumably by the Democrats or a mysterious left wing organisation of some sort) to front protests about gun ownership for political gain – briefly occupied the #1 trending spot yesterday.
Many of the top searches on the site for Hogg lead to videos created by alternative ‘news’ channels designed to discredit him. Indeed, outlets such as Infowars have repeatedly attacked the Florida survivors. Some have even gone as far to suggest that the fact Hogg’s father works for the FBI is evidence that the entire thing is an anti-Trump conspiracy... as opposed to simply students campaigning for political change that will bring a halt to America’s school shooting epidemic.
Hogg himself has insisted that he is not an actor and is merely someone who witnessed a terrible ordeal who is now having to come to terms with it.
Fake News
A similar thing occurred in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, in which 58 people died. In the days and weeks that followed there were a slew of videos claiming that the incident was a hoax designed to further the agenda of the anti-gun lobby. There were also big viewer numbers for videos claiming that Texas church shooter Devin Kelley had ties to far left groups.
Critics are now concerned that YouTube’s still largely unknown algorithms are feeding this discontent by promoting disinformation – or ‘fake news’, to use 2018 parlance. As these controversial videos gain traffic, they increasingly drown out legitimate coverage.
Arguably YouTube’s current mechanics encourage this. It’s a clicks economy, and the more outlandish the claim, the more attention it’s likely to garner. And the more attention this absurdity attracts, the further down the list legitimate news slides. After all, YouTube profits from the ads on any video, regardless of the content. From a business perspective, more clicks equals more profit – ethics and decency aren’t an automatic feature of that equation.
A YouTube spokesperson told The Guardian that it has started implementing changes that will improve the performance of legitimate news, but admitted that “in some circumstances these changes are not working quickly enough”. Its harassment policy has also been updated to allow it to tackle videos that target tragedy victims.
