YouTube removes restrictions on ‘false claims’ around presidential election

YouTube in the US is to drop restrictions on content that makes ‘false claims’ around US presidential elections that it imposed in December 2020 amid bogus claims by then president Donald Trump that the election had been stolen.

In a blog posting, YouTube  said “it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape”.

The Alphabet-owned video site said 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”.

With the 2024 presidential campaign under way, YouTube has decided to “stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections”.

YouTube claims it will be able to mitigate the negative impact of this move by ensuring that when people come to the site looking for news, “they see content from authoritative sources prominently in search and recommendations”.

The policy as it was implemented led to some results that could be interpreted as restricting authentic news coverage, such as the removal of video content of Trump calling for January 6 rioters to go home (but which included his false claims about election fraud) and coverage of a US congressional committee hearing that include Trump repeating those falsehoods.

YouTube also said that its other election misinformation polciies remain in place, “including those that disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes”.