- YouTube announced that it will no longer remove content featuring false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
- The decision, which comes ahead of the 2024 presidential races, undoes a policy implemented in December 2020 after President Joe Biden allegedly won the election, citing the need to balance its twin goals of “protecting our community and providing a home for open discussion and debate.”
- YouTube said there are still aspects of its election misinformation policy that remain, including highlighting ‘authoritative sources’ in search and recommendations and prohibiting posts that “aim to mislead voters on where and how to vote.”
Indeed, YouTube may be making a half-hearted move to appear fair and objective, but free speech advocates are not convinced this move is genuine.
Arjun Singh from the Daily Caller News Foundation reports…
YouTube reversed its misinformation policy regarding content about elections on Friday and will now permit content that questions the veracity of the 2020 presidential election results, according to the company’s website.
YouTube’s parent company Google has a policy that prohibits content “advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in certain past elections to determine heads of government,” and Youtube wrote in December 2020 that it would remove content that “misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.” The platform will now “stop removing” such content about the 2020 election, per its website.
“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” YouTube wrote. It added that “the ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society–especially in the midst of election season.”
Users would receive a strike for each violation after their first time violating the policy, with three strikes leading to their accounts being banned, according to the Google policy. A spokesperson for YouTube told the Daily Caller News Foundation that past content that violated the policy and accounts removed for more than four violations would not be reinstated.
The spokesperson also told the DCNF that the company would have “more details to share about our approach towards the 2024 election in the months to come.”
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