YouTube Expands Its Healthcare Certification Program To Creators
Source: YouTube
YouTube is expanding its healthcare certification program to licensed healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and therapists, who share healthcare-related videos.
Access To Health Product Features
U.S.-based health creators can now apply to access YouTube's health product features for the first time. Health source informational panels help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, while health content shelves highlight videos from vetted sources when users search for health topics. Previously, they were only accessible to educational institutions, healthcare organizations, medical journals, and government officials.
Requirements For Healthcare Creators
Applicants must have proof of their license and follow the best practices of the Council for Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine, and the World Health Organization for sharing health information. They also must have a YouTube health content-focused channel that’s in good standing and has more than 2,000 watch hours on public videos in the last year.
Embracing Creators As Sources While Reducing Misinformation
YouTube rolling out the program to creators shows how individuals have become just as influential or, in some cases, more influential than entities. With more people turning to the internet for information and answers, creators are often the source.
This is helpful as it makes information more accessible, but due to the possibility of misinformation, it can be harmful. Social media, particularly video-first platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, are rife with misinformation, which is dangerous when it’s related to topics such as health.
YouTube's certification program aims to reduce the impact of inaccurate or misleading voices while surfacing more videos from verified, authoritative sources of health-related information. Highlighting vetted channels and ranking their videos higher in the algorithm, YouTube helps viewers identify credible sources and find the appropriate videos.
Potential To Roll Out The Certification Approach To Other Industries
YouTube’s certification approach has the potential to be rolled out to other industries, such as financial products and services, where people typically need some form of certification or qualification to work in that industry.
On a more extreme approach, China’s National Radio and Television Administration and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released a code of conduct for creators that share content on topics such as law, medicine, and finances to demonstrate their qualifications before they can live stream.
While it is unlikely that U.S. governing bodies would come to something like this, it is likely that more social media platforms will support initiatives like these in order to combat the spread of misinformation and protect users. However, they may receive pushback as some may see this as a sort of censorship for opinions that differ from what is considered mainstream.
