Youtube is stepping up its campaign to deal with clickbait videos, which means providing misleading content compared to the cover photo (thumbnail). Starting from India, the platform will take down videos that use deceptive titles and thumbnails to attract viewers, especially those related to breaking news and current events. The campaign will expand to other countries in the “coming months.”
In the first phase, YouTube will focus on removing serious clickbait videos without imposing penalties on content creators. However, once this policy has been fully disseminated, the platform will prioritize stricter control over newly uploaded videos.
While YouTube's intentions are clear, this raises many important questions:
How is Clickbait defined? A typical example YouTube gives of serious clickbait includes:
- The video is titled “This character has left forever” but in reality, they just resigned.
- The thumbnail image is related to “important political news,” but the video content only mentions a daily news story.
So should we just focus on political content or expand into other fields? The answers to these questions will be important in determining the impact of this initiative on both creators and viewers.
While there are still many uncertainties, this move highlights the growing importance of combating misinformation, while working towards building a more transparent and online video creative environment.
Currently, it is unclear whether this policy will be applied in the US, UK or other countries. We've reached out to Google to learn more and will update as soon as new information becomes available.