YouTube to allow content making claims of fraud about past elections, in policy about-turn
Chris McGrath
Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube on Friday said it would no longer remove content making claims that the 2020 or past U.S. presidential elections was fraudulent, in a policy reversal.
The update comes over three years after YouTube had said it would ban misleading content during an increasingly fraught 2020 election campaign that saw current President Joe Biden win over Donald Trump.
"With 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections," YouTube said in a blog post.
"In the current environment, we find 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," the video sharing platform added.
The subject of how social media platforms handle potentially false and misleading election content has been in focus over the past few years, with household names such as Meta's (META) Facebook and Twitter also seeing a rise in such disinformation.
YouTube clarified that the rest of its policies against "hate speech, harassment, and incitement to violence" would continue to apply to all user content, including elections.
President Joe Biden - a Democrat - in April formally launched his re-election bid for 2024. His opponent from the Republican party will likely be decided in a two-way battle between former President Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who formally entered the race for 2024 last month.
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