YouTube promotes “freedom of expression” as it loosens moderation policies
Following in the footsteps of other online platforms, YouTube has relaxed its approach to reviewing cotent.
YouTube has relaxed its moderation policies, according to a report from The New York Times. Content reviewers have been instructed to not be so hasty in removing content that might violate its policies if they’re in the “public interest”.
Training material that was viewed by the NY Times demonstrated what kind of material might constitute content that is in the public interest. Such material includes “discussions of elections, ideologies, movements, race, gender, sexuality, abortion, immigration, censorship”, as reported by The Verge. Additionally, this type of content can remain live if no more than half of the channel’s content breaks YouTube’s rules – this was previously one quarter.
YouTube has said that this move is an expansion of its policy change made before the US 2024 election, which let content from election candidates remain up even if it violated policy. As long as the content classed as educational, documentary, scientific, and artistic content (EDSA) content, it was allowed to remain live.
The NY Times reported that YouTube moderators have also been instructed to take a less cut-throat approach. They have been told to remove content if “freedom of expression value may outweigh harm risk”, and to check with a manager first when they come across borderline content, instead of immediately removing it.
YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell gave an email statement to The Verge, saying: “We regularly update our Community Guidelines to adapt to the content we see on YouTube.” The statement explained that these EDSA exception only “apply to a small fraction” of videos on YouTube.
Bell explained that the idea behind these loosened moderation policies is to avoid having to remove an hour’s worth of a news podcast, for example, because it contained a very small section of non-policy abiding content.
As The Verge notes, this move is another in a wider trend of social media and other online platforms relaxing their approach to moderating content. Following President Trump’s re-election, Meta updated its policy around hate speech, allowing users to cite mental illness and abnormality in reference to gender or sexual orientation. The company also got rid of third-party fact checking, relaxing its approach to misinformation.