YouTube says it will be blocking and removing content that talks about allegations of election fraud, despite multiple lawsuits remaining unresolved in key battleground states.
The Google-owned firm says this new policy was put in place because the Dec. 8 “safe harbor” deadline had passed. They claim that “enough states have certified their election results.”
But there are still outstanding legal challenges, including one in the Supreme Court.
YouTube’s statement did not mention any of this, and did not mention the Electoral College vote date on Dec 14.
YouTube says it will “start removing any piece of content … that misleads people.” For example, “videos claiming that a presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors” will be removed.
The enforcement will ramp up in the coming weeks. Since September, they’ve deleted over 8,000 channels, and thousands of videos—most of which were taken down before they got 100 views.
The company says it will guide people to “authoritative information” provided by corporate news outlets such as ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN. But over the past month since the election, these news outlets have provided little coverage of lawsuits or allegations of election fraud.
Some say this censorship is reminiscent of communist tactics.
Others call the move hypocritical.
Social media manager from The Daily Caller, Logan Hall, posted screenshots showing that YouTube did not remove, at any point, posts alleging election fraud in the 2018 midterm election or the 2016 general election. He says no “safe harbor” deadline was applied to these posts.
YouTube and other social media companies have come under fire for policing and censoring content on their platforms.
In October 2020, a lawsuit against YouTube alleged the firm repeatedly breached its own terms of service by deleting the plantiffs’ pages or suspending them without cause and not telling them the reason why.
YouTube responded to a request for comment, reiterating their policies.
