The increasing commonness of clickbait titles, especially in video formats, is raising serious alarm for digital platforms like YouTube, as it erodes trust and credibility. It seems that YouTube, which recently announced taking action against celebrity deepfakes, is now taking a serious stance on the issue of ‘clickbait’ as well. Taking the first step towards this, the Google-owned video-streaming giant begins cracking down on egregious clickbait on the platform.
Launched in 2005, the company explains that by ‘egregious clickbait’ it means videos whose titles or thumbnails make promises or claims that aren’t delivered within the video itself. For instance, a video title saying ‘The President Resigned!’ where the video doesn’t address the president’s resignation, and a thumbnail that says ‘Top Political News’ on a video that doesn’t include any news coverage, will be treated as egregious clickbait.
“Egregious clickbait can leave viewers feeling tricked, frustrated, or even misled—particularly in moments when they come to YouTube in search for important or timely information,” the company said in a blog post.
The company also clarifies, that while implementing this plan, it will further tighten scrutiny, especially regarding breaking news or current events videos. And the most gripping part is that YouTube is going to start targeting and reigning in such misleading/clickbait content, starting with India as the country has the largest YouTube audience in the world – with around 476 million users. According to reports, people in India spend an average of 29 hours a month on YouTube. Meanwhile, this development becomes more interesting as ‘News’ is one of the most-watched categories on YouTube in India, following gaming, music, entertainment, and more.
For those curious about how YouTube will take action against such content – whether by directly deleting or removing the video from the channel or if the platform will first issue some kind of warning – there is some clarity on this as well. With 2.70 billion active users across the globe, YouTube clarifies that it will begin by removing content that violates this new policy, without issuing a strike for now as the company wants to give creators time to adjust to these enforcement updates.
