YouTube Starts to Verify Health Care Workers in the UK

Health creators won't get special verification if flagged for 'medical misinformation'

The logo of YouTube displayed by a tablet in Toulouse, France, on Oct. 5, 2021. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

YouTube has rolled out a verification scheme for medical workers in the UK owing to the rise of people accessing health information online in the country.

YouTube is now handing out a mark of authenticity to UK doctors, nurses, psychologists, health practitioners, or organisations who have to pass a stringent verification process.

The tech giant’s partners say this is to differentiate content of “doubtful provenance,” but critics fear this will only further entrench pharmaceutical industry-approved information on the site.

Health creators submitting their accounts have to go through a multi-stepped verification process that works in partnership with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the NHS.

They also will have their past videos scrutinised and will not receive verification if previous videos uploaded to YouTube have been flagged with any “medical misinformation.”

YouTube began accepting applications in June.

The Epoch Times has not been able to verify how this verification affects an account’s access to monetisation.

Accessing Health Information Online

YouTube already introduced measures such as a “medical misinformation policy” that will censor any medical or health-related content that doesn’t align with claims made by the World Health Organization (WHO).

On Friday, YouTube head of UK health Dr. Vishaal Virani told the BBC that the move was owing to the high number of Britons accessing health care information through the video-sharing platform.

“Whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not, whether the health industry is pushing for it or not, people are accessing health information online,” he said.

“We need to do as good a job as possible to bring rigour to the content that they are subsequently consuming when they do start their care journey online,” added Dr. Virani.

Chairwoman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard said: “We all know how difficult it can be to differentiate between health care information from trusted and reliable sources and content which is inaccurate or doubtful provenance.

“I am pleased to say we have been able to draw on our own expertise and that of organisations from across the UK health care landscape to produce an easy-to-apply set of principles which will ultimately benefit everyone who turns to YouTube seeking trustworthy health information.”

Only Allow Verified Health Workers to Post

Professor Norman Fenton, a world-leading risk expert and mathematician at Queen Mary London University has a YouTube channel with over 20,000 subscribers.

Over the past few years Mr. Fenton has used his skills in Bayesian probability, a mathematical procedure that applies probabilities to statistical problems, to study COVID-19 vaccine data.

For example, in December, Mr. Fenton and Martin Neil, professor of Computer Science and Statistics also at Queen Mary University of London, released a paper that concluded that there is a “miscategorisation status of those who died shortly after vaccination.”

At the time, he told The Epoch Times that after crunching the English data, “we can’t see any evidence that the vaccines are reducing all-cause mortality—there is no longer much evidence that they are doing much good actually.”

Reacting to YouTube’s verification system, Mr. Fenton said, “Eventually they will only allow, presumably, those verified health workers to post anything.”

He added that anyone not verified will just as easily be classified as “misinformation.”

Mr. Fenton said that on his channel a lot of videos get taken down “immediately.”

People Self Censor

In July, an investigation published by the British Medical Association found that royal colleges in the UK have received more than £9 million in marketing payments from drug and medical devices companies since 2015 sparking conflict of interest concerns.

Mr. Fenton expressed concern that all health information on YouTube could “ultimately be approved by the pharmaceutical companies only.”

He noted that alternative video-sharing platforms such as Rumble and Bitchute have not yet been able to reach the audience that YouTube has.

UK-based users accounted for more than 2 billion video views of clips on health conditions in 2021.

“YouTube is sort of the main game in town, so it’s hard to avoid the problem. So ultimately, people self censor. It’s a problem,” he added.

The Epoch Times contacted the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and YouTube for comment.

PA Media contributed to this report.