YouTube will remove content that promotes “cancer treatments that have been proven harmful or ineffective” or that “discourage viewers from seeking professional medical treatment,” the video platform announced today. The enforcement comes as YouTube tries to streamline its medical moderation guidelines based on what it knows as it tries to tackle misinformation about topics like covid-19, vaccines, and health. reproduction.
Going forward, Google’s video platform says it will apply its medical misinformation policies when there is a high risk to public health, when public guidance from health authorities is available, and when a subject is prone to error. YouTube hopes that this policy framework will be flexible enough to cover a wide range of medical topics, while finding a balance between harm reduction and allowing debate.
Videos are not allowed to discourage viewers from seeking professional medical treatment
In its blog post, YouTube said it will act against treatments that are actively harmful, as well as those that have not been proven and are proposed instead of established alternatives. A video cannot, for example, encourage users to take vitamin C supplements as an alternative to radiation therapy.
