Yet, criticisms about YouTube being a breeding ground for these non-mainstream, Overton-window-expanding ideas have persisted. Now, the company is trying something that could potentially harm the company's treasured view-hours metric: Tweaking its algorithm to stop users from being ushered into conspiratorial "rabbit holes" on everything from flat earthers, to the 9/11 truther movement, to purveyors of miracle cures.

According to the Daily Beast, the streaming video website is tweaking its recommendations algorithm to overlook content that "comes close" to violating - but doesn't explicitly violate - YouTube's "community guidelines." The company estimates that this will impact less than 1% of all videos posted on the site.