YouTube's fake news course has reached just 500 kids
Its next goal: 20,000, by dramatically expanding the Internet Citizens program.
You've got to hand it to YouTube: despite overwhelming odds, Google's video wing keeps pushing through with its Internet Citizens program. By its count, the video service has educated some 500 people about the dangers of misleading or outright fake news. YouTube wants to boost that number by quite a bit. The hope is to reach 20,000 more people via workshops, youth workers and schools in the UK, it writes. Considering how young the platform skews, perhaps its new tactics will be fruitful.
YouTube will open up its training framework and put it on the Internet Citizens website next month. Whether this actually makes a difference is a little hard to quantify -- especially when you consider the relatively paltry numbers here.
Sure, 20,500 people is impressive in its own right. But when compare it to some of the more salacious videos racking up millions of views it loses some of its impact. Maybe the youth workshops can help spread the message far and wide, though.
