Dado Ruvic/Reuters
YouTube will invest $25 million to “improve its news features” and combat “fake news” ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the Financial Times reports. The company said it would invest in more “authoritative” news videos to counter the conspiracy-theory clips that plague the site. It will also insert “text articles” in feeds when breaking news occurs, and will roll out an “information panel” promoting videos from legitimate news groups. Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube, told reporters that taking videos down would not be part of this effort. “News events are going to be questioned, rightly or wrongly, people will have a conspiratorial opinion. We want users to make decisions for themselves,” he said. While Facebook and Twitter have been mostly taking the heat in the fight against disinformation, followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and far-right personalities have used the video-hosting website as a platform.