Health influencer Dr. Eric Berg has accused YouTube of hiding viewpoints that don’t align with approved sources like the World Health Organization.
Prominent health influencer “Dr. Eric Berg” has expressed his concerns over YouTube’s latest move to change its algorithms, affecting health-related content that does not align with the general medical consensus put forth by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“YouTube has just now banned anything related to health that doesn’t align with the general medical consensus,” Mr. Berg said in a video posted on YouTube on Sept. 13.
Mr. Berg, who is known for sharing alternative health perspectives with his 11 million subscribers, states in a disclaimer on his website that people call him “Dr. Berg” because he graduated with a Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1988 at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, and he maintains his chiropractor license in California. However, he no longer practices so that he can focus on creating educational videos full-time.
Referring to YouTube’s policy shift, Mr. Berg said: “I think it’s going to hurt a lot of people because freedom of health information is really freedom of speech. It’s a very slippery slope.”
In an Aug. 15 blog post, YouTube unveiled its efforts to create a new framework to crack down on “medical misinformation” on the platform.
The video-sharing giant intends to streamline its “existing medical misinformation guidelines” into three distinct categories—”Prevention, Treatment, and Denial”—focusing on health conditions, treatments, and substances that contradict the guidance of local health authorities or the WHO.
“To determine if a condition, treatment, or substance is in scope of our medical misinformation policies, we’ll evaluate whether it’s associated with a high public health risk, publicly available guidance from health authorities around the world, and whether it’s generally prone to misinformation,” the company said in the blog post.
This push is part of YouTube’s efforts to become “a destination for high-quality health content.” Under its partnership, the WHO has touted the removal of over 850,000 videos about COVID-19 between February 2020 and January 2021.
“We’re taking what we’ve learned so far about the most effective ways to tackle medical misinformation to simplify our approach for creators, viewers, and partners,” YouTube’s blog post reads.
