YouTube to ban extremist videos

YouTube on Wednesday announced that it updated its policies to officially ban videos that promote extremist ideologies such as white supremacy or caste superiority, a move that will likely result thousands of videos being removed.

In a blog post on Wednesday, YouTube said it will begin “prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.”

The Google-owned company said videos that “glorify Nazi ideology” would fall under that category.

It also said it would begin promoting more “authoritative content” in recommendations, an attempt to address the deluge of conspiracy theories on the platform and criticisms that users are often drawn into a “rabbit hole” of false or hateful content by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm.

“For example, if a user is watching a video that comes close to violating our policies, our systems may include more videos from authoritative sources (like top news channels) in the “watch next” panel,” YouTube wrote.