YouTube to stop deleting false claims about 2020 election

YouTube will no longer remove false claims about the 2020 presidential election, the video-sharing platform said Friday.

In a blog post on its corporate website, Google-owned Youtube said that after having removed thousands of videos containing false information, "We recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape." YouTube added that while their removal policy "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 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 U.S. presidential elections," the blog post said. The rest of YouTube's content policies, including the banning of hate speech and harassment, remain in place.

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YouTube told Axios, which first broke the news, that it would have more information about content moderation for the 2024 election in the coming months.

The decision is a reversal of a policy that YouTube put in place in December 2020, following a slew of misinformation about that year's election. Many social media companies enacted similar initiatives, though as the years have gone on, YouTube remained one of the last brands with this type of policy.

Despite over two years having passed since the election, some expressed concerns that YouTube's removal of this policy could see misinformation rise on the platform. The company's decision also comes as former President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that he won the 2020 election.

"[Youtube'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," Julie Millican, vice president of the liberal-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America, told NPR.