SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube on Thursday said it will start removing videos comprising false or unsafe claims about abortion in a crackdown on misinformation about the medical procedure.
The move comes as women pursue reliable pregnancy-related information online in the stir of the right to abortions revoked in many areas through the United States.
“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,” a YouTube spokesperson said in answer to an AFP inquiry.
“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.”
Examples of content YouTube said it will remove from its platform globally comprise instructions for unsafe at-home abortions and false claims such as there being a high risk of the procedure producing cancer or infertility.
YouTube said it will also start accumulation information from the National Library of Medicine to abortion-related videos or questions to provide reliable context.
The video flooding site is operated by Alphabet-owned Google, which previous this month announced it delete users’ location history when they visit abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters and other places where privacy is required.
“If our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Google, wrote in a blog post at the time.
The deviations by the tech company follow the US Supreme Court’s reversal of its 1973 decision that had provided for a constitutional right to abortion, freeing a swing of states to ban or strictly restrict the procedure and prompting mass complaints across the country.
Activists and politicians calling on Google and other tech giants to bound the amount of information they collect to avoid it used for abortion investigations and prosecutions.