YouTube reveals grand plan to become a more trustworthy news destination
In an effort to combat misinformation, YouTube is rolling out immersive news hubs that bring together content from “authoritative sources” in one convenient location.
The platform states in its announcement that the content collected on these viewing pages includes a variety of formats, including ‘video on demand, live streams, podcasts and Shorts’. The goal here is to give viewers or listeners the opportunity to learn about a particular event from multiple angles. You can watch a Short for a ‘quick catch up’ before moving on to a ‘Long Video’ for more details.
YouTube says content from authoritative sources will have a purple newspaper icon next to it “on the homepage or in search results.” Selecting those videos will open the watch page so you can scroll through what else is there while the first clip plays at the top.
The example you see above was found in the official post and is apparently a ‘fake representation’ of what a watch page might look like. A YouTube representative told us that each hub will be unique to the news story at the center.
When asked what an authoritative source is, the same representative pointed us to a Google policy web page revealing how the tech giant identifies the right sources. To give a quick overview, YouTube uses “various signals” that indicate channel quality and coverage of certain events. Additionally, they use a combination of “machine learning techniques (and) third-party human evaluators” to improve these “signals.”
Availability
The feature is currently being made available to YouTube on mobile “in approximately 40 countries,” including but not limited to the US, Canada, UK, France, Australia, India and Japan. Later, the update will be available on desktop and the YouTube Smart TV app.
It’s interesting to see YouTube (and to a greater extent Google) embrace news curation at a time when other platforms are shying away from it. X, formerly known as Twitter, recently decided to do this stop showing headlines in messages. Meta follows a similar route. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said Topics do nothing to actively promote ‘political (or) hard news’ among users.
Possibly bad news
No matter how big the hub, there could be bad news on the horizon. YouTube made another announcement revealing creators on the website can provide timestamps to specific products they tag in a video. Each timestamp causes a shop button to appear on screen, giving viewers the option to purchase the item in question.
Most of you reading this may not care about this, but you should because it can greatly increase the number of ads you see on the platform. Imagine getting a mini commercial every 30 seconds.
Speaking of advertising, check out TechRadar’s list of the best ad blockers for 2023.