For YouTube, curbing misinformation on its platform may mean punishing some of its stars, a step it's not shown it can broadly take, despite recent policy shift
which has also pledged to clean up misinformation that could lead to real-world harm — is that the definition of “harmful” misinformation is circular, our columnist explains. http://www.nytimes.com/... Frank Pasquale / @frankpasquale : “All but one of 30 Flat Earthers interviewed said they hadn't considered the Earth to be flat until watching videos promoting the theory on YouTube” http://www.engadget.com/... @nytimestech : Any successful effort to limit misinformation on YouTube may look less like a simple algorithm tweak and more like deprogramming a generation, writes @kevinroose http://www.nytimes.com/... John Herrman / @jwherrman : if a platform has incentivized a broad style of content for *years,* its catalog assumes its character. you can't just redirect youtube users to pro-vaccine content, because it barely exists. creating pro-vox content for youtube would have been a weird thing to do! http://twitter.com/... Becca Lewis / @beccalew : Great read from @kevinroose on YouTube's conspiracy theory problems: “any successful effort may look less like a simple algorithm tweak, and more like deprogramming a generation.” http://twitter.com/... Walt Mossberg / @waltmossberg : The plague of hoaxes and conspiracy theories on Facebook gets a lot of deserved attention. But, as this column by @kevinroose points out, @YouTube is a poisonous well of such lies, and its remedies are weak. Fix it, @Google. http://www.nytimes.com/... See also Mediagazer