In all the turmoil over how tech companies handled an unsubstantiated article About Hunter Biden of the New York Post, one big company has differentiated itself: YouTube.
It didn’t say anything. And what it did remains a mystery, if anything.
On Wednesday, the New York Post uploaded a one-minute, 17-second video highlighting the main points of the article on their YouTube channel, which has more than 430,000 subscribers. For most of the day, users who searched for “Hunter Biden” on YouTube saw the video at the top of the site’s “Top News” shelf. As of Thursday lunchtime, the video had 100,000 views – a respectable number, but certainly not what it takes to be viral.
In recent years, YouTube has made changes to its “recommendation algorithm” for something called borderline content – the types of videos that mark the line between what is acceptable on the platform and what is considered a violation of its guidelines. exceed. Because of these changes, YouTube is preventing such content from being recommended and preventing the videos from appearing prominently in search results or on the homepage.
About 36 hours after the video was posted, YouTube announced that it would remain active without restriction. “Given the information currently available, content related to this news item is permitted on YouTube. We will continue to rate content against our guidelines as new details emerge, ”said Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesperson.
The response from YouTube was in sharp contrast to the immediate and public response from Facebook and Twitter. Facebook said it would limit the circulation of the article on its platform so third-party fact checkers could verify the claims. Twitter said it blocked the article because it contained people’s personal information, violated privacy regulations, and because the article violated guidelines on hacked materials.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans a subpoena Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, is due to testify on October 23 about the company’s decision to block the article. Mr Dorsey, along with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, is due to testify on October 28th Section 230, the law that protects technology companies from liability for some of the content posted by their users.
While the New York Post video’s number of views remains subdued, the videos associated with the article have performed very well. A Fox Business interview with Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House advisor who starred in the article, received more than 275,000 views. An interview in Fox News with White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany about locking her Twitter account after sharing the Post’s story received 795,000 views.
