YouTube announced on Friday that it will no longer remove content claiming that the 2020 election or other past U.S. presidential elections were marred by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches.”
This is a reversal for the Google-owned video service, which previously said it would remove new misinformation posts that claim voter fraud or errors changed past outcomes.
In a blog post, YouTube stated that this updated policy is an attempt to protect the ability to “openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions.”
The updated policy will not prevent YouTube from removing content that deceives voters in the upcoming 2024 election and other future races, both in the U.S. and abroad. The company confirmed that its other election misinformation policies remain unchanged.
John Wihbey, an associate professor at Northeastern University who studies social media and misinformation, commented that this updated policy may be difficult to enforce as disinformation campaigners “set the stage for an encore” using generalized anti-voting rhetoric.
This announcement follows criticism by Media Matters and other groups of YouTube and other major social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, for not doing more to combat the spread of election misinformation and disinformation on their platforms.
The left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters stated that the policy change is not surprising as YouTube was one of the “last major social media platforms” to keep this policy in place.
