YouTube will cease taking down content material that promotes false claims concerning the 2020 US presidential election, marking an about-face by the world’s largest video website as the subsequent American presidential contest begins heating up.
The division of Alphabet Inc.’s Google mentioned the brand new coverage will take impact on Friday.
“Within the present atmosphere, we discover that whereas eradicating this content material does curb some misinformation, it might even have the unintended impact of curbing political speech with out meaningfully decreasing the danger of violence or different real-world hurt,” the corporate mentioned in a weblog publish. “With that in thoughts, and with 2024 campaigns properly underway, we’ll cease eradicating content material that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred within the 2020 and different previous US presidential elections.”
YouTube and different social media firms have been beneath stress for the reason that 2016 US presidential election to make sure their platforms are usually not manipulated to unfold political misinformation. YouTube mentioned in December that it had taken down greater than 10,000 movies associated to the US midterm elections for violating its insurance policies on election integrity and different pointers. A few of these movies have been eliminated for selling the falsehood that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen.
YouTube mentioned Friday it will proceed to ban content material that misleads folks about find out how to vote, advances false info that might dissuade folks from voting, and promotes interference with elections. Axios earlier reported the corporate’s coverage shift.
