In total, the misleading videos had been viewed more than 62 million times.

Among the false claims was the idea that pharmaceutical companies already have a coronavirus vaccine but are refusing to sell it.

YouTube said it was committed to reducing the spread of harmful misinformation.

The researchers suggested “good quality, accurate information” had been uploaded to YouTube by government bodies and health experts.

But it said the videos were often difficult to understand and lacked the popular appeal of YouTube stars and vloggers.

The study, published online by BMJ Global Health, looked at the most widely viewed coronavirus-related videos in English, as of 21 March.

After excluding duplicate videos, videos longer than an hour and videos that did not include relevant audio or visual material, they were left with 69 to analyse.

The videos were scored on whether they presented exclusively factual information about viral spread, coronavirus symptoms, prevention and potential treatments.

Videos from government agencies scored significantly better than other sources, but were less widely viewed.

Of the 19 videos found to include misinformation:

• about a third came from entertainment news sources

• national news outlets accounted for about a quarter

• internet news sources also account for about a quarter

• 13% had been uploaded by independent video-makers

The report recommends that governments and health authorities should collaborate with entertainment news sources and social media influencers to make appealing, factual content that is more widely viewed.

YouTube said in a statement: "We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information at this critical time, including raising authoritative content, reducing the spread of harmful misinformation and showing information panels, using NHS and World Health Organization (WHO) data, to help combat misinformation.

"We have clear policies that prohibit videos promoting medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us. Now any content that disputes the existence or transmission of Covid-19, as described by the WHO and the NHS is in violation of YouTube policies. For borderline content that could misinform users in harmful ways, we reduce recommendations.

“We’ll continue to evaluate the impact of these videos on communities around the world.”
Analysis

by Marianna Spring, specialist disinformation and social media reporter

In recent weeks, there has been an increase in highly polished videos promoting conspiracy theories being shared on YouTube - and they prove very popular.

So these findings - although concerning - are not surprising.

The accurate information shared by trusted public health bodies on YouTube tends to be more complex.

It can lack the popular appeal of the conspiracy videos, which give misleading explanations to worried people who are looking for quick answers, or someone to blame.

That includes videos such as Plandemic, which was widely shared online last week.

High-quality production values and interviews with supposed experts can make these videos very convincing. Often facts will be presented out of context and used to draw false conclusions.

And tackling this kind of content is a game of cat-and-mouse for social media sites.

Once videos gain traction, even if they are removed, they continue to be uploaded repeatedly by other users.

It is not just alternative outlets uploading misinformation either. Whether for views or clicks, the study suggests some mainstream media outlets are also guilty of spreading misleading information.

“Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves” reads another.

A third: “Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon.”

Many of us by now will have seen something of the “infodemic” the World Health Organization (WHO) warned is swirling across society.

Whether popping into your online timeline or maybe forwarded by a relative, it would have been a rumour or revelation so eye-grabbing, so shockingly different from the norm, that they’re hard to ignore.
Image copyright Facebook

Yet while false claims about coronavirus have been hard to miss, the interests and ideologies underneath them have been far less visible.

Now, a co-investigation by BBC Click and the UK counter-extremism think-tank Institute of Strategic Dialogue, indicates how both extremist political and fringe medical communities have tried to exploit the pandemic online.
Blaming immigration

Chloe Colliver led the study: “We started doing this research because we were interested to look at the intersection of extremism and disinformation online,” she explained.

“We wanted to know how the coronavirus crisis was affecting those trends.”

First, researchers collected about 150,000 public Facebook posts sent by 38 far-right groups and pages since January.

They used keywords to spot the key themes of each post, and then algorithms to map what each group tended to speak about overall.

Researchers identified five communities, united by the topic of discussion:

• Immigration

• Islam

• Judaism

• LGBT

• Elites

The numbers, probably indicative rather than giving the full picture, show that for the first four of these, the scale of activity hadn’t increased in volume since the lockdown.

But while there weren’t more posts about immigration, for example, discussions about the topic had increasingly linked it to Covid-19.

It’s the same for the theme of Islam - the scale was constant, but more and more of the discussion had begun to explicitly link the virus to Muslims, claiming they were exempt from the lockdown, blaming them for its spread, and even hoping they would catch it.

But the fifth and largest community - the one concerning the “elites” - had shown a significant spike in activity during the lockdown.

Discussions included the relationship of these “elites” - like Jeff Bezos, the Rothschilds, George Soros and Bill Gates - to the “deep state”, and their alleged role in causing the pandemic.

The researchers discovered that along with tying it to “elites”, this community was more likely than any other to think the virus was engineered, over-hyped, or had an existing cure.
Image caption Disinformation has also been spread outside Facebook in chat rooms

“This was the big shift,” Colliver explained.

“Anti-elite conversations have escalated dramatically, especially driving home the idea the lockdown is a tool of social control.”
‘Humungous scale’

As they dug deeper into the posts, the researchers took note of many thousands of links directing users to fringe political and health websites.

Newsguard, a website-rating organisation, had identified 34 of them as having shared information about the coronavirus that was “materially false”.

“The key interests behind these websites were either fringe politics or fringe health, sometimes both wrapped up together” Ms Colliver continued.

What was surprising to the researchers, however, was the size: “The scale was humungous”.
Image copyright Facebook

They counted the total number of “interactions” - likes, shares, comments, and so on - which each public post on Facebook had received which contained a link to any of these 34 sites.

Over the same time period:

• the WHO’s website received 6.2 million interactions

• the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), received 6.4 million

• TheEpochTimes.com, a news site whose advertising was banned by Facebook, and which was accused of covert inauthentic activity by both Facebook and Twitter last year, received more than 48 million interactions

The 34 websites together received more than 80 million interactions.

These included:

• almost 150,000 interactions for HumansAreFree.com, which made claims that the “plandemic” had been prepared years before the outbreak

• about 1.7 million interactions for RealFarmacy.com, which falsely claims that personal ultraviolet lamps are a safe remedy for coronavirus

“Interactions” do not imply agreement, and they were counted for each website overall, not exclusively for misinformation regarding coronavirus.

“We have removed a number of links shared by BBC Click for violating our policies on hate speech and the spread of harmful misinformation,” Facebook said in response to the study.

“Where a post does not violate our policies but is deemed by third party fact-checkers to be false, we reduce its distribution and show warning labels marking the post as false. When people see these warning labels, 95% of the time they do not go on to view the original content,” it said.
Growing threat

There are also plenty of other ways for the CDC and WHO to get their information out to audiences.

Recent research by the UK watchdog Ofcom suggests that most people learn about the virus from mainstream sources.

However, what the WHO has called an “infodemic” looks more like a parallel world, complete with social organisation, activism and gift shops.

It is one where fringe politics and fringe health have begun to mix. They both carry the idea that the lockdown isn’t about safety but about control, which they promise to “liberate” their followers from.

Given its size and energy, it is a world that also may represent a growing threat to the lockdown itself, and the medical and political consensus on which it is grounded.

The Google-owned video clip service acted after repeatedly warning Mr Icke that he had violated its policies by posting misleading information about the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the firm will still allow videos posted by others that feature Mr Icke to remain live, so long as their content does not break its rules.

It follows a similar ban by Facebook.

“YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS,” a spokeswoman told the BBC.

“Due to continued violation of these policies, we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.”

The channel had more than 900,000 subscribers at the time it was removed. The last clip Mr Icke had posted on Friday - about his Facebook ban - had about 120,000 views.

YouTube confirmed Mr Icke would not be allowed to start again by setting up a new channel.
Censorship debate

Last month, a live-streamed interview with Mr Icke posted by another account prompted YouTube to ban all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking coronavirus symptoms to 5G mobile phone networks.

The tech firm subsequently went further by banning any material that:

• suggests coronavirus does not exist

• contains medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice about the virus

• explicitly disputes the efficacy of guidance about social distancing and self-isolation that has been issued by the WHO and/or local health authorities

Some civil rights groups have previously expressed concern about “growing online censorship around the coronavirus pandemic” by the major social networks.

“It is through a free forum of ideas that citizens understand, contextualise and trust information, not through harsh restrictions on information sharing,” they wrote to YouTube on 16 April.

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But the latest move was welcomed by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK-based think tank.

It said that videos of Mr Icke discussing conspiracy theories had been viewed about 30 million times across social media.

“We commend YouTube on bowing to pressure and taking action on David Icke’s channel,” said CCDH’s chief executive Imran Ahmed.

“However, there remains a network of channels and shadowy amplifiers, who promote Mr Icke’s content [and] need to be removed.”

CCDH is now urging Twitter and Facebook’s Instagram to take similar action.