YouTube reportedly discouraged employees from reporting fake, toxic videos
For years, YouTube ignored its employees’ pleas to address and take down toxic videos in a quest to boost engagement, reports Bloomberg. According to more than 20 former and current YouTube staffers, employees would offer proposals to curb the spread of videos that contained disturbing, extremist content, and / or conspiracy theories, but leadership was reportedly more interested in boosting engagement than heeding those warnings.
One proposal offered a way to keep content that was “close to the line” of violating policies on the platform but remove it from the recommended tab. YouTube rejected that suggestion in 2016, a former engineer said, and instead continued to recommend videos regardless of how controversial they were. According...