ShareYouTube accidentally links Notre-Dame fire to 9/11 attacks
BELGRADE: The fire that has devastated Notre-Dame is "God's punishment" two Serbian tabloids said Monday, linking it to tweet saying a Kosovo flag was displayed in the Paris cathedral for World War I centennial commemorations last year. "God's punishment caught them," read headlines of Alo and Informer tabloids online editions late Monday.
However, the two outlets, both close to Serbia's rulers, withdrew the articles later. Alo called the blaze was punishment for "spitting on Serb victims" in the 1990s war in Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia where ethnic Albanians, with US and NATO backing, won self-rule in 1999. Serbia has rejected Kosovo's 2008 claim to independence, and is sensitive to any international recognition of Kosovo as a standalone state.
A tweet attributed to Serbia's ambassador to Paris posted last November said that Kosovo's flag was among those of other countries decorating the inside of Notre-Dame Cathedral for a ceremony marking the centenary of the end of World War I. Although there was no confirmation of that from the cathedral or French authorities, the assertion - picked up by Serbian media - further strained French-Serbian relations already taut because of the presence of Kosovo President Hashim Thaci at the commemorations near to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Serbia is currently marking the 20th anniversary of the NATO bombing campaign that forced its troops out of Kosovo in 1999, a period that evokes national trauma and humiliation. Vucic, however, joined other world leaders in expressing solidarity with France over the Notre-Dame fire, saying on Twitter that "all Serbian citizens are sad" and are with their "French friends" and that his country was prepared to help with the cathedral's reconstruction.
Linked to 9/11 attacks
In another development, a YouTube fact-check feature which is meant to tackle misinformation accidentally tagged live broadcasts of a fire engulfing Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris with details about the 9/11 terror attacks. The blaze erupted in the UNESCO world heritage landmark in the French capital Monday, sending its spire and roof crashing to the ground as flames and clouds of smoke billowed into the sky. The fire, which at one point threatened the entire edifice, was extinguished Tuesday around 15 hours after it first broke out.
News outlets began live-streaming broadcasts of the fire on YouTube, but below some of the clips an unusual text box popped up - an entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica about the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. In those attacks, Al-Qaeda militants hijacked two passenger planes and flew them into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, causing them to collapse, while a third hijacked jet smashed into the Pentagon. Some 3,000 people were killed.
A spokesman for YouTube, which is owned by Google, said the text box feature - which is currently only available to users in the US and South Korea - had been disabled for live streams related to the fire. "These panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call," the spokesman told AFP. "We are deeply saddened by the ongoing fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral." The feature, which also links to other outside sources such as Wikipedia, was introduced last year after YouTube faced intense criticism over videos containing misleading and extreme content.
The panels are supposed to combat misleading videos about well-known events - such as the first successful manned landing on the moon - by presenting well-established facts, in a bid to stop the spread of conspiracy theories. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter came under fire last month after a horrific video of a gunman's deadly rampage at two New Zealand mosques was circulated on the sites. The Christchurch massacre, in which 50 people were killed, was live-streamed on Facebook, which moved to block the footage. But it was then shared repeatedly on the other two sites.- Agencies
