YouTube has decided that its viewers and content creators are only allowed to believe what they decide is right — especially when it comes to climate change.
As reported by BuzzFeed, the video platform has begun “combating scientific misinformation” by putting Wikipedia entries at the bottom of all climate change videos produced by conservatives. PragerU’s video, hosted by Richard Lindzen, which discussed climate change, had a “fact check” about global warming placed at the bottom from YouTube.
YouTube deployed a similar strategy on a CNN video that hosted a debate between television host Bill Nye and founder of Climate Depot Marc Morano. This time a blurb about the “realities of global warming” appeared on the bottom of the screen. In a statement to the Media Research Center, Morano said, “The fact check completely misses the point.This is only the beginning of the appeasement of activists by YouTube.”
He went on to call the YouTube policy “virtue signaling” and said that “This is the end of any hint that the left has any tolerance. That notion is gone now that they are going after conservative content.”
YouTube clearly decided to pick a side in the controversial debate, using the sentence from Wikipedia: “Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”
YouTube wants to make sure that any reason a viewer saw in Morano’s comments were undermined by content from Wikipedia. The irony is, even Wikipedia argues that it is not a reliable source of information. In its own article, Wikipedia states: “Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment.” According to Buzzfeed, Wikipedia didn’t even know that YouTube was using its content for fact checks. Wikipedia once listed Naziism as the ideology for conservatives.
But of course, the liberal academics that would ordinarily discourage use of Wikipedia are all in favor of YouTube’s new policy. “It’s probably better than just accepting the denier video at face value,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change. Leiserowitz was deploying a common liberal tactic of trying to link climate skeptics to Holocaust deniers.
So far, even liberal content is affected, since YouTube hasn’t perfected the algorithm. The fact-checks are showing up on all climate science videos, regardless of the source.
PragerU’s chief marketing officer Craig Strazzeri told BuzzFeed, “Despite claiming to be a public forum and a platform open to all, YouTube is clearly a left-wing organization.”
