![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/YouTube-censored.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhether it is a video claiming the earth is flat or the moon landing was faked, conspiracy theories are not hard to find on Google\u2019s YouTube. But in a significant policy change, YouTube said on Friday that it planned to stop recommending them.<\/span><\/p>\n After years of criticism that YouTube leads viewers to videos that spread misinformation, the company said it was changing what videos it recommends to users. In a blog post<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, YouTube said it would no longer suggest videos with \u201cborderline content\u201d or those that \u201cmisinform users in a harmful way\u201d even if the footage does not violate its community guidelines<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube said the number of videos affected by the policy change amounted to less than 1 percent of all videos on the platform. But given the billions of videos in YouTube\u2019s library, it is still a large number.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube and other powerful technology platforms have faced rising criticism for failing to police the content that users post.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube\u2019s recommendation engine has been denounced for pushing users to troubling content<\/a><\/strong><\/span> even when they showed little interest in such videos. It has also been blamed for widening the political divide in the country, pushing already partisan viewers to more extreme points of view<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n The new policy is also the latest example of YouTube taking a more aggressive approach to content that many find distasteful even if it is not in violation of the service\u2019s community guidelines.<\/span><\/p>\n In late 2017, YouTube started putting \u201ccontroversial religious or supremacist\u201d content in a \u201climited state\u201d so the videos are not monetized with advertising and features such as comments and likes are turned off. Some videos appear behind a brief message saying the videos may be inappropriate or offensive.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube only provided three examples of the types of videos that it would stop recommending: those promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, ones claiming the earth is flat, or content making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9\/11.<\/span><\/p>\n The company declined to provide more detail on what other videos would be classified borderline.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube is not taking down the targeted videos and it will still recommend them to users who subscribe to a channel that creates such content. Also, YouTube will not exclude the so-called borderline videos from search results.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users,\u201d YouTube wrote in the blog post.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube said it was constantly adjusting its recommendation system, noting that it made hundreds of changes last year. In its early years, YouTube said, it suggested videos the company thought would lead to more clicks or views, but it found that people who create videos started trying to game the system with clickbait titles.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube recently said it wanted to recommend videos that viewers would consider \u201ctime well spent.\u201d YouTube also said it had been working to broaden recommendations so that they aren\u2019t too similar to the most recent video.<\/span><\/p>\n Much like the powerful and opaque algorithms that govern the search results of YouTube\u2019s parent company, Google, the video service is secretive about the factors weighed by its systems that dictate which videos get recommended.<\/span><\/p>\n YouTube did not reveal much about how it would determine which videos would be excluded from its recommendations. The decisions on specific videos will not be made by YouTube employees, but by so-called machine-learning algorithms.<\/span><\/p>\n Human raters from \u201call over the U.S.,\u201d the company said, will watch different YouTube videos and provide feedback on the quality of those videos. Those judgments will help inform what the algorithm flags.<\/span><\/p>\n Google has adopted a similar approach in determining the quality of its search results.<\/span><\/p>\n