YouTube is eyeing new measures to sort out misinformation on its platform. Among the adjustments being thought of, in line with Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, are updates that will successfully “break” sharing options for movies with “borderline content.”

The change could be a serious shift for the platform, although it’s not clear if the corporate will truly take such a step. Mohan described the likelihood in a prolonged outlining the corporate’s method to stopping misinformation from going viral. In the put up, he famous that so-called borderline content material — “videos that don’t quite cross the line of our policies for removal but that we don’t necessarily want to recommend to people” — will be significantly difficult to cope with.

That’s as a result of YouTube goals these movies from its suggestions, however they’ll nonetheless unfold broadly when shared on different platforms. “One possible way to address this is to disable the share button or break the link on videos that we’re already limiting in recommendations,” he wrote. “That effectively means you couldn’t embed or link to a borderline video on another site.”

Mohan added that the corporate was nonetheless wrestling with whether or not or not it ought to take this extra aggressive method. “We grapple with whether preventing shares may go too far in restricting a viewer’s freedoms.” He stated an alternate method might be including “an interstitial that appears before a viewer can watch a borderline embedded or linked video, letting them know the content may contain misinformation.”

If YouTube have been to stop sharing of some movies, it could be a dramatic step for the platform, which has repeatedly cited statistics claiming that lower than 1 p.c of views on borderline content material comes from suggestions. But critics have identified that this doesn’t totally tackle the problem, and truth checkers and misinformation researchers have cited YouTube as a serious vector of misinformation. Last month, a bunch of 80 truth checking organizations signed an to the video platform urging it to do extra to cease dangerous misinformation and disinformation.

The YouTube exec hinted at different adjustments to come back as nicely. He stated the corporate can also be contemplating including “additional types of labels to search results” when there’s a growing scenario and authoritative data will not be accessible. The firm can also be trying to beef up its partnerships with “with experts and non-governmental organizations around the world” and spend money on expertise to detect “hyperlocal misinformation, with capability to support local languages.”