Singapore – Streaming and video hosting platform YouTube has announced the launch of its ‘Creators for Impact’ in the Asia-Pacific region, launching first in Singapore. Said initiative is aimed at sharing tips and learnings for local creators to tackle issues of misinformation and mental health on their channels while delivering a compelling message to their audience.
YouTube also hopes that through this programme, it will be helpful in the creator ecosystem by being a tool that can help define and shape public discussion on important issues prevalent in today’s society.
Over the next five months from July to November 2022, 14 creators have been shortlisted based on their channel’s credibility, social impact and potential. Participants can look forward to roundtable discussions with experts, key opinion leaders, and their fellow creators as they work towards using their platform to raise awareness on topics such as misinformation and mental health.
Some of the participating channels include Denise Soong Ee Lyn, TheSmartLocal, Our Grandfather Story, UNfiltered, and Sarah X. Miracle.
Speaking to MARKETECH APAC, Siddharth Srinivasan, head of YouTube content partnerships for Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines, said that they recognise the great contribution of local content creators, to which they have leveraged the open nature of the platform to educate, inspire and entertain viewers in creative ways, with their content gaining recognition both locally and globally.
“It’s important for us to ensure we are helping our creators to reach their audiences with the right content on such topics – in terms of connecting them with subject matter experts to share safe, credible content, and creating an environment where they are able to tap on the local creator community to pick up new tips on content creation like collaborating with a licensed expert to engaging audiences in a live Q&A,” Srinivasan said.
He also noted that YouTube has been active in creating partnerships to address mental health discussion on the platform, including with social media creative studio Bloomr.sg, and Ministry of Funny through Tribe Talkin’ to discuss topics such as personal experiences with issues such as anxiety and depression, mental pressures exerted by COVID-19-induced disruptions, and content addressing topics of violent extremism.
When asked about the state of the platform in terms of misinformation, he said that problematic content represents a fraction of one percent of the content on YouTube and they are constantly working to reduce this even further. He also noted that their work on reducing misinformation has been focused on four pillars: removing violative content, raising up authoritative content, reducing the spread of borderline content and rewarding trusted creators – the 4Rs of responsibility.
“When it comes to misinformation, speedy removals will always be important but we know they’re not nearly enough. Instead, it’s how we also treat all the content we’re leaving up on YouTube by raising up information from trusted sources and reducing the spread of videos with harmful misinformation,” he added.
Srinivasan also added that in Singapore, they have taken proactive steps to raise authoritative voices on the platform and ensure people get access to the right information. These include Top News and Breaking News shelves in Singapore to highlight videos from authoritative news sources.
“Since the beginning of this pandemic, we’ve focused on connecting people with useful, high-quality information and each other while removing violative content that violates our COVID-19 medical misinformation policy and Vaccine Misinformation policy. In Q1 2022, globally, we have removed more than 50,000 videos for violating the vaccine provisions of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. These provisions took effect in October 2020,” he concluded.
