YouTube to rely more heavily on automatic content moderation due to Covid-19

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has pushed companies to adopt a number of protective measures for its workers in order to slow down the spread of the virus, and Google has now shed some more light on how it's doing that for its workers. For consumers and users of its services, these measures may have a significant impact, as the company will start relying more heavily on automation and less on human workers.

In a blog post, the company explains that YouTube, which usually relies on both automated and human moderation for videos, will now shift more of that moderation to be done automatically. That means creators may see content classified for removal, even if they may not always violate the service's policies. What's more, should you try to appeal that classification, it will take longer for it to be reviewed since human workers won't be as readily available. Similar situations can be expected from other Google services that rely on automatic content flagging.

Google is also warning that users, advertisers, developers, and publishers may also see increased delays in responses from support teams in regards to non-critical services. These services will be mostly supported by e-mail, chat, and self-service channels.

Aside from these consumer-facing consequences, Google explained some of the steps it's taking to protect its workers. The company is encouraging more workers to work from home and rolling out remote access and equipment to those workers so they can continue to work securely. The company is also focusing more of its efforts on essential services, like security and account recovery, as well as adjusting shift times, duration, and the number of people on the same shift.

Google also says it will compensate workers for the time that they would have worked during this period when the company is reducing their schedules. The company has also established a fund to ensure that its extended workforce will also be compensated if they can't go to work because they have symptoms of the Covid-19 infection.