Over 2,000 false medical-related ads on YouTube removed

Such advertisements are fake news that have surfaced online for a long time and are dangerous to people’s health, said delegates at the launch ceremony of a new handbook on fake news prevention in cyberspace in Vietnam on Tuesday.

Le Quang Tu Do, Head of Department of Broadcasting and Electronic Information of the Ministry of Information and Communication, said the questionable ads were most active in 2021 when they popped up every time a viewer opened YouTube.

Since these ads appeared on an international platform like YouTube, local management agencies didn’t know how to handle them when they were first discovered.

When local agencies detect a false ad that is sent to Google, they will use the algorithm to find and block similar ads.

“The development of the algorithm took about six months and has been deployed since September,” Do said. “After a month, we have basically blocked most of these ads and they are no longer appearing on YouTube.”

Between late 2020 and early 2022, many YouTube users in Vietnam were bombarded by these false medical ads on the platform as they frequently appeared on posted videos.

Google’s policy also restricts prescription medicine ads from being distributed on their platform. However, the Google representative didn’t explain why these false medical ads were still approved. Google only asserted that when the company detects an ad that violates its policies, it will be promptly removed.