Google CEO Eric Schmidt was a busy man at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday. Not only was he telling audiences that the Android Gingerbread 2.3 will support near-field-communications to read RFID tags as well as communicate with other phones, he gave a more detailed insight into what to expect from Chrome OS, before pulling out his own Nexus S handset and giving the world real proof the handset was soon to be released.
He didn’t stop there either.
Schmidt, speaking with a select number of journalists also commented that Google was in the process of recruiting extra staff to add “people to do reviews of videos” to help monitor and remove inappropriate content found on YouTube. Whilst the video sharing site has algorithms to filter such content, Schmidt said it’s almost “impossible” to use them exclusively to monitor all of the sites content.
The questions had increased significance as YouTube has recently had to remove Al-Qaeda videos that were inciting hatred and promoting violence. Several videos had been posted to the site before the British Government contacted the White House to request removal of the content.
YouTube’s spokesperson said it was looking into new Awlaki videos posted to the portal, adding that it had “community guidelines that prohibit dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech or incitement to commit specific and serious acts of violence”. It is thought that its additional staff will be tasked with policing future Al-Qaeda submissions but casting an eye over the 2 billion plus videos on the site is not an easy job.
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As with many communities, YouTube may need to rely on its users to help flag such videos, helping to pull content from the site quicker.
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