Swing and a miss, Google.
So, by now you may have heard f the massive fire that has essentially destroyed the Notre Dame cathedral in France. In addition to losing a massively important piece of Gothic architecture and place of worship for the Catholic religion, there were also net losses to classic art as well. While the cathedral was undergoing a renovation, there’s no information as to the cause of the fire at this time.
But it wouldn’t a massively important event without YouTube putting their foot in things, though, now would it? Because several streams of the disaster on YouTube caused one of the platform’s new algorithms to include a snippet of, and links to, Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on the 9/11 attacks.
The feature is part of a new set of tools meant to combat misinformation on YouTube. While YouTube manually took down the links one by one over the course of a few minutes, people did take notice.
A spokesperson for YouTube had no explanation for how the panels were triggered, but had this to say about how it was supposed to work:
These panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call. We are disabling these panels for livestreams related to the fire.
According to the feature’s disclaimer, it’s currently only available in the US and South Korea. The feature was created due to the difficulties in moderating streams on the platform, especially in this political climate.
Source: Buzzfeed News
About Author
