YouTube introduced a dedicated news-watching experience to help viewers across 40 countries find the latest stories from reputable sources, the company announced on Wednesday. The aim is to make reliable news more readily accessible with two added features including a watch page and a “Shorts Innovation Program.”
The watch page will pull content from what YouTube has deemed “authoritative sources” and will recommend additional videos related to the topic. The Shorts feature provides condensed information so viewers can quickly catch up to the news of the day.
“Now more than ever, we remain committed to connecting people to high-quality information they can trust, particularly in times of elections, unrest, and natural disasters,” YouTube said in a news release.
The streaming platform said it is working with more than 20 organizations across 10 countries to bring relevant news to viewers, but only those with an existing long-form video presence on YouTube were included. YouTube is also investing $US1.6 million into the Shorts Innovation Program for News.
“Our goal with the Shorts Innovation Program is to jumpstart innovative news publishers who are interested in embracing short-form news capabilities but haven’t had the resources to do so,” YouTube said in its release.
YouTube’s effort to streamline the news features on its platform comes as Meta’s Threads app has vocally rejected actively promoting news on the platform. addressed the possibility of promoting news on Threads after the app’s launch, saying the company will not encourage news-driven content.
“Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads – they have on Instagram as well to some extent – but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote when the Twitter clone launched. He reiterated Meta’s decision in a Threads post last week, writing: “We won’t do anything to get between people and content from accounts they follow, regardless of whether or not the content is news, but won’t proactively recommend news content to people who don’t seek it out.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been criticized for an overwhelming amount of misinformation on X, formerly called Twitter, and the European Union recently opened an investigation into the platform’s content moderation practices. The investigation follows reports that people are using X to spread “illegal content and disinformation, in particular the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech,” the EU wrote in a press release.
YouTube is now addressing the issue of misinformation with its own news features, which recommend videos from major news outlets including The Associated Press, Sky News, and CBS Evening News.
In its press release, YouTube concluded it believes “these updates help underscore YouTube’s commitment to connecting viewers with credible, timely, and substantive news content as well as our dedication to supporting news publishers in experimenting with emerging video news formats.”
While the gesture might buy YouTube some goodwill, it’s all a bit of a mixed message. The streaming site makes algorithmic recommendations constantly. It’s essentially saying that you should go to this one destination for news that it recommends but if you’re recommended news anywhere else on the platform, you should be skeptical. Thanks for the tip.