A change to YouTube’s election integrity policy has been revealed. Now, the platform will permit content about fraud, mistakes, or technical issues with the 2020 presidential and other U.S. elections to stay online. This modification was confirmed to Axios on Friday.
Given that the policy change was implemented by YouTube for the first time in December 2020 following the certification of the results of the 2020 election by a number of states, it is noteworthy. The business has warned that upholding this strategy would limit political debate without actually lowering the danger of violence or other potential harm.
Since 2020, YouTube’s policy has had a negative impact on free speech, leading to its limitation without successfully reducing the risks of violence and other dangerous situations. The action has sparked political polarization, with conservatives wanting to express their viewpoint using open discourse and free speech as a platform.
YouTube’s assertion
In order to address and safeguard our community and to provide a forum for open discussion and debate during the ongoing election season, we are releasing a new set of modifications on YouTube today.
We always aim to protect our community while also creating a space for open discourse and debate when we create our policies. There are occasions when these objectives conflict with one another, and political discourse is likely the arena where finding a balance is most difficult. A democratic society’s ability to function, especially during election season, depends on the freedom to freely debate political ideas, even those that are divisive or predicated on unproven assumptions.
Once the states’ safe harbor date for certification had passed, we first implemented a section of our elections disinformation policy centered on the integrity of previous US Presidential elections in December 2020. We realized it was appropriate to reevaluate the consequences of this policy in light of the current environment’s changes after two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle. While eliminating this content does reduce some disinformation in the current climate, it may also unintentionally have the effect of limiting political discourse without significantly lowering the risk of violence or other real-world harm. In light of this, and with the campaigns for 2024 already well under way, we will stop censoring anything that promotes untrue allegations of widespread fraud, mistakes, or flaws in the 2020 and previous US Presidential elections. This becomes effective today, June 2, a Friday. Like any change to our policies, this one was carefully thought out.
This particular facet of our election disinformation policy is simply one part of a comprehensive strategy we have in place to promote elections on YouTube. The following remains constant:
- We are making sure that content from reputable sources appears prominently in search and recommendations when users visit YouTube in search of news and information about elections. For instance, after the US election of 2020, we discovered that the most popular and most highly recommended election videos on YouTube were from reputable sources like news organizations. Additionally, our 2020 election information panels—which provided pertinent context from polling places to real-time results—were viewed more than 4.5 billion times in total.
- All of our election misinformation policies are still in effect, and they prohibit content that tries to mislead voters about the date, location, method, or requirements for voting; false assertions that could significantly deter people from voting, such as those that contest the legitimacy of voting by mail; and content that incites others to obstruct democratic processes.
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For all other forms of content, including elections, everyone on YouTube is still subject to the rest of our policies. This includes regulations that prohibit harassment, incitement to violence, and hate speech.
The democratic process’ integrity is something we and the public both take very seriously. We’ll continue to be on the lookout as the election plays out, just like we did in 2020 and 2022. Additionally, a team dedicated to the elections that consists of members of our Intelligence Desk, Trust & Safety, and product teams keeps track of current events and modifies our plan as necessary. In the upcoming months, we’ll have additional information to discuss about how we plan to approach the 2024 election.
They already knew the 2020 election was a farce, so now it is okay to discuss it. Whoops.