YouTube will now let medical professionals apply for additional verification – NBC News

Credible medical professionals are now able to apply for a special verification on YouTube, marking the video giant’s latest effort to combat medical misinformation online. In a blog post shared on Thursday, Dr. Garth Graham, the global head of YouTube Health, wrote that healthcare professionals like doctors, nurses and mental health specialists, can now apply to use the platform’s health product features. YouTube’s health product features were introduced last year but were only available to educational institutions, public health departments, hospitals and government entities.The health product features include “health source information panels on videos to help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, and health content shelves that more effectively highlight videos from these sources when you search for specific health topics.”The news comes a year after YouTube announced a total ban on vaccine misinformation and the termination of the accounts of several prominent anti-vaccine influencers, citing “the need to remove egregious harmful content.” That policy was enacted after the company began to see false claims about Covid-19 vaccines “spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general,” according to a company blog post. The new tools announced Thursday are intended to help users identify reliable sources and weed out those who give medical advice without proper…
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