YouTube Says It Will Remove Videos Carrying Misinformation About Abortion, Directs Users To Facts

California: YouTube said that it will start removing videos containing false claims about abortion in a crackdown on misinformation about the medical procedure. The development comes following United States government revoking the right to abortion in many areas across the country and with more women looking for reliable pregnancy-related information online. According to YouTube, “starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies.”Also Read – Thoda Shift Ho Jaiye, No More: You Can Now Remove Passengers From Your Reserved Train Seat Without Fight

The company further notified that “like all of our policies on health/medical topics, we rely on published guidance from health authorities. We prioritize connecting people to content from authoritative sources on health topics, and we continuously review our policies & products as real world events unfold.” Also Read – India’s 101th Rank On Global Hunger Index Is Not A True Picture, Says Government

1/ Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies. https://t.co/P7A27WPYuD

— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) July 21, 2022

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“We believe it’s important to connect people to content from authoritative sources regarding health topics, and we continuously review our policies and products as real-world events unfold,” YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez said in a statement cited by CNN.

According to CNN, the policy update comes amid widespread attention to abortion, and the accessibility of the procedure, after the Supreme Court last month overturned Roe v Wade Medical experts have warned that bad actors may try to capitalize on the confusion and emotional upset caused by various states limiting access to abortion in order to spread false claims about the procedure.

Recently, TikTok began removing abortion-related videos that violate its policy against medical misinformation, including those that share potentially dangerous advice about how to self-induce an abortion.

Google, which owns YouTube, has come under a unique amount of scrutiny from lawmakers and privacy advocates for the wide range of data it collects on users, which could be used by law enforcement to enforce anti-abortion laws.

Earlier this month, the company said it would delete location data when users visit abortion clinics. Lawmakers have also urged Google to prevent searches for abortion clinics from returning misleading results and ads that direct users to facilities that oppose the procedure, as per CNN.