On Tuesday, YouTube announced that it would begin removing videos on its platform that claim the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” The platform promised to take action against content that was misleading about the results of the election, particularly those making baseless claims of voter fraud or tampering. Some critics say that YouTube is acting too late on this issue.
YouTube has often been criticized for allowing charged content to proliferate, particularly conspiracy theories of the social and political variety. On Tuesday, the company posted a new blog post explaining that it would acknowledge the “safe harbor deadline” for state-level election disputes to be resolved. Since election results are now formally certified, YouTube will take action against content claiming that President-elect Joe Biden was not elected legitimately.
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“Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections,” the post read. “For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come.”
“As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context,” the post added. YouTube’s post also highlighted some of the action it has already taken, claiming that since September, it has “terminated over 8,000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading election-related videos for violating our existing policies.” It said that about 77% of those videos were removed before they reached 100 views.
Still, President Donald Trump himself continues to be one of the biggest promoters of election conspiracy theories, despite losing dozens of lawsuits and legal challenges around the country already. Investigators have found no evidence of widespread election tampering anywhere, but Trump’s social media posts are only receiving warning marks from Twitter and Facebook — not being removed.
As for YouTube, the video site is home to outlets and pundits that continue to peddle these conspiracy theories as well, though it has begun to take action against some of the biggest offenders. Between this and the previous presidential election, information security and social media manipulation are becoming bigger and bigger issues to consider.
