YouTube announced that it will begin removing videos that make false or misleading claims about the presidential election. The decision comes after the deadline for states to certify the results of the election passed.
"Yesterday (December 8) was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. 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 election," YouTube said in a blog post. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors,"
The company said that videos related to election make up a small portion of overall views but boasted that most of the videos people are watching come from "authoritative news sources." While videos containing misinformation make up a fraction of 1% of what is watched on YouTube, the company believes it can lower that number even more.
"We understand the need for intense scrutiny on our elections-related work. Our teams work hard to ensure we are striking a balance between allowing for a broad range of political speech and making sure our platform isn't abused to incite real-world harm or broadly spread harmful misinformation. We welcome ongoing debate and discussion and will keep engaging with experts, researchers, and organizations to ensure that our policies and products are meeting that goal," YouTube said.
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