The widget showing information about the Sept. 11 terror attacks appears to have been triggered by a new feature YouTube is testing to provide "topical context" around videos that might contain misinformation.

Francois Guillot / AFP / Getty Images

As the Notre Dame Cathedral went up in flames on Monday, YouTube flagged livestreams of the incident as possible sources of misinformation and then started showing people articles about the 9/11 attacks. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but it broke out as the 12th-century cathedral was undergoing a multimillion dollar renovation project. Police in Paris also said no deaths were reported from the site.

YouTube

Several news outlets quickly started livestreaming the fire on YouTube. However, underneath several of them was a small gray panel titled "September 11 attacks," which contained a snippet from an Encyclopedia Britannica article about 9/11. The feature is part of a larger rollout of tools and disclaimers to prevent users from consuming misinformation on the platform.

YouTube

If a user clicked the gray box, they would be taken to the full article about the US terror attack. BuzzFeed News found at least three livestreams of the Notre Dame fire from major news outlets with the 9/11 disclaimer. The disclaimer was then removed, one by one, after several minutes. But by then, Twitter users had taken notice.

Why in the world is @YouTube putting information about 9/11 underneath the Notre Dame livestream from @FRANCE24? (Especially since it seems like, at least right now, ongoing renovations are the most likely cause, no indication of terror) https://t.co/A3HP36epxx

I'm so glad we let tech platforms eat the journalism industry. Now, I can sit and watch a live stream of Notre Dame burning while YouTube's fake news widget tells me about 9/11 for some reason.

YouTube is suggesting viewers read about 9/11 during Notre Dame-related streams, for some reason

On a few different livestreams of Notre Dame on YouTube, the site offers a totally unprompted, unrelated description of the September 11 attacks:

YouTube