In April, YouTube launched the Internet Citizens initiative — a series of day-long workshops across the U.K. to teach 13- to 18-year-olds to spot fake news and promote social tolerance online.
And now, the initiative, which is part of YouTube’s larger Creators For Change program, has announced a massive expansion. Despite having touched just 500 participants since the program’s launch, YouTube is now vowing to reach 20,000 U.K. youngsters in coming months.
“We’re also going to make our curriculum, developed with many fantastic partners including ISD (the Institute For Strategic Dialogue), U.K. Youth, and Livity, available to everyone through our Internet Citizens website in August,” wrote Google U.K.’s head of public policy, Naomi Gummer, in a company blog post.
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YouTube has involved bold-faced creators in the cross-country workshops, including BENI’s Nadir Nahdi, as well as youth mentors Alain ‘Fusion’ Clapham of In The Streets, and Efe Ezekiel of Ushine Ishine. These experts helped share advice with participants about how to deal with offensive speech, how to think critically about information consumed online, and gave practical tips about how to moderate inappropriate content, according to Gummer.
