YouTube has become a major platform for delivering essential information across the world including India today. But questions are being raised once again about the veracity of videos on this platform. According to a report by the British Medical General, about 25 percent of the most viewed videos on YouTube give false and misleading information. Reports have claimed that there has been an increase in cases of misinformation related to covid-19 on YouTube amid the coronavirus epidemic.
Research has found that the highest number of videos seen related to coronaviruses have been uploaded until March 21, 2020. Coronavirus and COVID-19 key-words are used while uploading these videos. In research, out of the maximum 69 videos seen related to Corona, 19 are fake and provide false information. These videos have been viewed by over 200 million people. Of the 19 videos giving false information related to Corona, 6 belong to the Entertainment category (32%), 5 to the News Network category (26%), 5 to the Entertainment News category (26%) and three to the Consumer category (13%). According to the reports, millions of videos are uploaded to YouTube every week and the monthly number of users visit the YouTube platform. At present, YouTube has about 2 billion users.
Apart from YouTube, other social media platforms have also increased content with Coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theory. YouTube recently removed a video of two California doctors who were promoting Kovid-19 lightly on YouTube. After this, doctors were appealed to refrain from giving false information related to Corona on social media to people. Twitter announced on Monday after Youtube that it was advising users not to tweet disputed or misleading claims about Coronavirus.
