YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki: Recommending Vitamin C Is Chinese Virus ‘Misinformation’

Google-owned YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki appeared on Brian Stelter’s CNN show, Reliable Sources, to discuss the kind of “misinformation” that YouTube is removing during the Chinese virus pandemic. The YouTube chief promised to remove “anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations.”

“We’ve served billions of impressions across our network that come from all the different public health organizations,” said Wojcicki, who discussed how YouTube is surfacing “authoritative” sources to users on its platform. “We’ve actually seen a 75 percent increase in the news coming from authoritative sources since the beginning of 2020,” boasted the YouTube CEO.

“What does that mean, does that mean an increase in video views for those?” asked Stelter.

“Yeah. We talk about that as ‘raising authoritative information,'” confirmed Wojcicki.

Great to talk with you, @BrianStelter, about the ways we're working at @YouTube to provide helpful and authoritative information and enable people to connect online even as we #StayHome https://t.co/rfzKNhelMl

— Susan Wojcicki (@SusanWojcicki) April 19, 2020

The CEO of the Google-owned platform went on to discuss the kind of content that YouTube takes down.

“We also talk about removing information that is problematic. Of course, anything that is medically unsubstantiated … so, people saying like, ‘take Vitamin C!, take tumeric!’ like ‘those will cure you.'”

“Those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy. So ‘remove’ is another really important part of our policy.”

“So you’re not just putting the truth next to the lie,” said Stelter. “You’re taking the lie down. That’s a pretty aggressive approach.”

The YouTube CEO explained that the platform has had to make “numerous policy changes, all within a really short period of time” to keep up with alleged coronavirus misinformation. Wojcicki cited the theory that 5G being the source of the virus as an example. “We quickly deemed that a violation of our policies with COVID-19 and removed that content.”