Notre-Dame Cathedral. As you probably already know, a strong fire engulfed the famous monument in Paris, France, the central tower and the entire roof being completely destroyed, unfortunately. Many people wanted to see live images of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire last night, and many used YouTube, but Google's platform once again showed its inability to provide people with correct information about with important events.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. Following the bloody attack in New Zealand, those at YouTube also implemented a border for live broadcasts that takes information about the event from Wikipedia, or Encyclopedia Britannica. The purpose of this informational framework is to help people find out real information about the event that they see in real time, but in the case of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, things did not go exactly as YouTube wanted, unfortunately.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. In the image below you will see that during a live YouTube broadcast made by France 24, a frame with information showing the terrorist attack of September 11 was displayed under the broadcast. The information was taken directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica, but since there is no information about any fire started at Notre Dame Cathedral, another completely different information was taken, ignoring even the history of the over 850-year-old cathedral.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. Tragic Fire Shows YouTube FAILURE
Notre-Dame Cathedral. YouTube created a special algorithm to display this information, and according to the company, for yesterday's fire, the display was done incorrectly, probably because the artificial intelligence was not trained well enough. Problems of this kind can appear whenever an algorithm is not sufficiently well thought out, and in the case of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, what happened shows us that YouTube is not yet ready to stop the spread of fake news.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. Google started a long time ago a fierce fight against fake news, mainly within its search engine, but with the changes in YouTube it has shown that sometimes even its platforms are the source of fake news. How YouTube chose to display that information for a generic live broadcast, which did not have any markings regarding the Notre Dame Cathedral, no one knows, but the connection between this event and the terrorist attack of September 11 is strange.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. Recognizing their mistake, those from YouTube will probably try to modify their algorithms in such a way that problems of this kind will no longer appear, but it is hard to say if they will succeed in preventing similar situations. YouTube is the largest platform for viewing video clips on the planet, and the tragedy at Notre Dame Cathedral shows us again that much more is needed to keep the world correctly informed about important events.
Notre-Dame Cathedral. Unfortunately, it is not known what was the source of last night's fire, but it is unlikely to be a terrorist attack.
