YouTube dumps policy against 2020 US election misinformation

YouTube on Friday (June 2) said that it will stop removing content that falsely claims US presidential election was full of "fraud, errors or glitches'. The decision attracted criticism from anti-misinformation advocates.

The announcement from Youtube, a Google-owned platform is a prominent departure from its policy initiated in December 2020. The policy attempted to curb false claims about 2020 elections. Most of these were pushed by then-president Donald Trump. He had claimed that there was widespread voter fraud during US Presidential Election 2020.

"The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society -- especially in the midst of election season," YouTube said in a blog post.

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"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."

The updated policy goes into effect immediately. It has been introduced at the time tech platforms are grappling with key issue of combating misinformation without curtailing free speech.

YouTube appeared to acknowledge that policing misinformation comes with downsides.

"Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape," the video-sharing giant said.

"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."

Criticism of YouTube's move

YouTube's policy change has got thumbs down from many.

"YouTube is dead wrong in its assertion that removing false election content curtails political speech without meaningfully reducing real-world harms," said Nora Benavidez, from the nonpartisan group Free Press.

"Its dangerous decision to immediately stop removing content... which continues to sow hate and disinformation that threatens our democracy must be reversed immediately."

The platform underlines that its other rules against election misinformation remain unchanged. These include its prohibition of content which deceives people or incites people to make them create interference with democratic processes.

"YouTube was one of the last major social media platforms to keep in place a policy attempting to curb 2020 election misinformation," said Julie Millican, vice president of the left-leaning watchdog Media Matters.

"Now, it's decided to take the easy way out by giving people like Donald Trump and his enablers free rein to continue to lie without consequence about the 2020 elections."

(With inputs from agencies)

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