YouTube CEO Wojcicki: We’ve Cut Amount of Time Americans Watch “Controversial Content” by 70%

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tells Lesley Stahl what the video platform is doing about hate speech in an interview Sunday on the CBS newsmagazine program ’60 Minutes.’

Wojcicki told ’60 Minutes’ that Google employs 10,000 people to focus on “controversial content.” She described their schedule, which includes time for therapy. Stahl also said there are reports that the “monitors” are “beginning to buy the conspiracy theories.”

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Susan Wojcicki: If we were held liable for every single piece of content that we recommended, we would have to review it. That would mean there’d be a much smaller set of information that people would be finding. Much, much smaller.

Lesley Stahl: She told us that earlier this year, YouTube started re-programming its algorithms in the U.S. to recommend questionable videos much less and point users who search for that kind of material to authoritative sources, like news clips. With these changes Wojcicki says they have cut down the amount of time Americans watch controversial content by 70%.