YouTube to hire 10,000 people to root out violent and extremist content

London: YouTube will hire 10,000 people to monitor and control violent extremism on the popular video streaming platform, along with curbing content that endangers children.

In an interview to The Daily Telegraph, Susan Wojcicki, Chief Executive of the Google-owned video-sharing site, said on Monday that "bad actors are exploiting" YouTube to "mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm".

"We will continue the growth of our teams, with the goal of bringing the total number of people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies to over 10,000 in 2018," Wojcicki was quoted as saying.

"We are also taking aggressive action on comments, launching new comment moderation tools and in some cases shutting down comments altogether," Wojcicki said.

YouTube has terminated 50 channels and removed thousands of videos as also advertisements from 5,00,000 exploitive videos under the current set of guidelines.

YouTube last week updated its recommendation feature to spotlight videos users are likely to find the most gratifying, brushing aside concerns that such an approach can trap people in bubbles of misinformation and like-minded opinions.

YouTube had been facing a lot of criticism from advertisers and regulators and advocacy groups for failing to police content and account for the way its services shape public opinion.

With Agency Inputs