YouTube to Start Cracking Down on ‘Egregious’ Clickbait
Credit: Alexander Shatov
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If you’ve been frustrated at finding decent videos on YouTube, you’ll be happy to know that the service is planning to take a much heavier hand against “clickbait” videos — those that try to entice you into viewing them with titles and thumbnails that turn out to have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the video.
YouTube posted an update on its India blog earlier this week, where it plans to begin the new crackdown. However, that’s just the start, as spokesperson Jack Malon told The Verge that it will “expand to more countries” in the “coming months.”
YouTube plans to focus on the most “egregious clickbait” on its platform, which it says often covers topics like breaking news or current events. This not only encourages folks to watch videos under false pretenses, but it can also be misleading, as some of the headlines are exaggerated or worded to present a distorted version of the news if folks don’t click through.
It’s reminiscent of the old joke from the 1980s about a British tabloid running a headline that said a high-ranking politician was caught wearing women’s underwear; that was far less surprising once you read the article and discovered it was about then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. However, YouTube also provides some more salient examples, such as a video title that says “The president resigned!” when it only discusses rumors of a possible resignation or, worse yet, doesn’t address the issue at all.
Some clickbait videos on YouTube are blatantly misleading not because they’re “fake news” but because they promise news and don’t deliver. For example, a thumbnail that says “BREAKING NEWS” may only be rambling commentary, and one that reads “top political news” might only include funny clips of cats.
Egregious clickbait occurs when the video’s title or thumbnail includes promises or claims that aren’t delivered within the video itself, especially when that content focuses on breaking news or current events. This can leave viewers feeling tricked, frustrated, or even misled—particularly in moments when they come to YouTube in search for important or timely information.
YouTube
For now, YouTube says it’s more concerned with getting rid of this content and educating creators rather than penalizing them. To give creators time to adjust, it will begin by removing existing content without issuing strikes against the account that posted it before going forward by prioritizing new video uploads.
Strikes will undoubtedly come against creators who persist in flaunting the rules. However, YouTube prefers to educate creators to help them become better YouTube citizens. Since 2019, first-time policy violations have received a one-time warning rather than a strike. In 2023, YouTube noted that most creators who receive an initial warning aren’t repeat offenders and want to do better. At the time, it rolled out a new program as part of its Community Guidelines, which offers a clean slate to any creator who takes an educational training course — as long as they don’t violate the same policy again within 90 days. A creator who earns three content strikes in a 90-day period will have their channel terminated.
As TechCrunch notes, YouTube hasn’t said much about how it will categorize news and current events, nor how it will compare thumbnails and headlines to a video’s actual content. With billions of videos already on YouTube and an estimated 500 hours of video being added every minute, we can guarantee that this will leverage AI rather than humans. However, it’s unclear whether Google plans to have a human review process before removing videos or warning creators or what the appeal process will be for mistakes (or if there will even be one).
