YouTube will begin removing videos that promote techniques to perform unsafe abortions and those they say feature false claims about abortion safety the company says.
The crackdown will delete videos questioning the safety of the medical procedure as well as those promoting dangerous at-home abortions.
“Like all of our policies on health/medical topics, we rely on published guidance from health authorities,” the Google-owned video streaming platform said on Twitter.
“We prioritize connecting people to content from authoritative sources on health topics, and we continuously review our policies [and] products as real world events unfold.”
DONATE: We are supported by readers like you.
The platform will also launch an information panel to provide users with “context and information from local and global health authorities under abortion-related videos and above relevant search results.”
This comes a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, finding the 1973 ruling wrongly took the right to regulate abortion away from the states.
The purge of videos will ramp up over the next few weeks, according to YouTube. At-home abortion videos are rare on the platform and some pro-life observers contend the real purpose is to remove videos from pro-life organizations that use long-standing data to point out the dangers of all abortions.
Under the company’s misinformation policy, YouTube bans certain types of content that it deems to be misleading, deceptive, or “having serious risk of egregious harm.”
“This includes certain types of misinformation that can cause real-world harm, like promoting harmful remedies or treatments, certain types of technically manipulated content, or content interfering with democratic processes,” the policy states.
–Wire services
