I saw the other day that Youtube intends to begin "promoting" material from "authoritative" sources with regards to breaking news- so I figured I'd do what I do best and predict what this actually means:
This program will fail and cause promoted material from "authoritative" sources to be attacked. Youtube may eventually do what Facebook did when it tried a similar strategy, and rescind the idea altogether.
The "authoritative" sources will virtually all be "fact checking" or corporate press firms which lie by omission, structure, or half truth on a literally daily basis.
This program, unless totally unsuccessful, will expand and eventually include promoting "family friendly" entertainment on edgier videos among other things. It will become more pervasive, slowly, over time, and eventually Youtube will have a true caste system in lieu of its current quasi-caste system with priority creators; this may even endanger the platform entirely.
The movement of Youtube from a site which was merely meant to host videos, without any internal moralism or significant political or social bent, to a site which is socially engineered at the most minute level, has almost been completed, much to the glee of those designing the new Youtube- for-profit media and entertainment firms which have been badly beaten by independent content, which has for several years now begun to eat away at their profit margins.
Anyone who believes this has anything to do with Youtube having a "conscience" is fooling themselves.