Big Tech platforms have taken it upon themselves to police misinformation, but why are they glorifying the mistakes at the World Health Organization?
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made a special appearance on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources podcast where she explained how YouTube has been fighting misinformation with what Big Tech considers to be more reputable sources. “We also talk about removing information that is problematic,” Wojcicki said. “We’ve had to update our policy numerous times associated with COVID-19.”
Wojcicki explained that YouTubers might give “medically unsubstantiated” advice like: “‘take vitamin C, you know, take turmeric, like those will cure you.’ Those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy.”
Wojcicki’s gold standard for facts on health? The hapless WHO. “Anything that would go against World Health Organization [WHO] recommendations would be a violation of our policy,” she commented.
Facebook has made the same blunder, nudging users away from one source of misinformation and directing them to another. Facebook VP of Integrity Guy Rosen wrote, “We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed,” in an April 16 company blog.
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Even as late as mid-January 2020, WHO was reporting faulty information that would worsen the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to WHO taking the Chinese regime at its word, it misinformed nations around the globe as to the nature of the virus as late as January 14. The WHO claimed in a tweet:
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.
Reclaim the Net observed the absurd irony:
And when it comes to the sources of ‘right information,’ Wojcicki has chosen ‘authoritative sources’ (legacy media outlets) and public health organizations – many of which were downplaying the severity of the coronavirus and telling the public masks are not effective as recently as late March, only to change their rhetoric in April to position the coronavirus as a much more serious threat and recommend wearing masks.
Tech commentator and former Blizzard game developer Mark Kern called out YouTube’s hypocrisy in a damning tweet:
This is the problem:
YouTube CEO says they will censor anything against WHO narrative.
WHO said don’t do travel bans.
WHO said don’t do masks.
WHO said there was no human to human transmission
The WHO got it all wrong, and @YouTube wants to ban you for pointing that out.
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