YouTube to combat fake news with information cues

YouTube will flag conspiracy theory videos with additional information from Wikipedia in an effort to tackle the spread of disinformation on its platform.

Though music and gaming videos are far more popular on YouTube, the company has made addressing the criticism around news and science videos a top priority this year.

"We're always exploring new ways to battle misinformation on YouTube", said a YouTube spokeswoman, highlighting that Wikipedia will be just one of the third-party sources featured in the companion unit.

Wojcicki, who spoke Tuesday evening at a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, showed examples of information cues for videos about the moon landing and chemtrails.

YouTube will determine what exactly qualifies as a conspiracy, she said, based on a list of conspiracy theories on the Internet, such as arguments that NASA faked the 1969 moon landing.

"When there are videos that are focused around something that's a conspiracy, we will show as a companion unit next to the video information from Wikipedia", said Wojcicki.

YouTube said these features will roll out in the coming months, but she can not share further information about its plans at this stage.

While this may not be targeting "fake news" directly, these new information cues seem to hope to provide some kind of stable information ground for viewers to have quick access to when watching videos about a variety controversial topics.