YouTube to remove some election conspiracy videos — but not those already posted

(WPTA21) – Video-sharing giant YouTube on Wednesday announced it will begin removing videos that contain disinformation regarding the recent election — but only those posted from this time forward.

Videos posted before Wednesday will remain avaialable.

The company announced its policy on a page noting “updates to (its) work supporting the integrity of the 2020 U.S. election.”

It reads, in part:

Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come. As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context.

YouTube notes that “on average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources… We understand the need for intense scrutiny on our elections-related work. Our teams work hard to ensure we are striking a balance between allowing for a broad range of political speech and making sure our platform isn’t abused to incite real-world harm or broadly spread harmful misinformation. We welcome ongoing debate and discussion and will keep engaging with experts, researchers and organizations to ensure that our policies and products are meeting that goal. And as always, we’ll apply learnings from this election to our ongoing efforts to protect the integrity of elections around the world.”

YouTube and social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter have been criticized from various sides — for doing too much or not doing enough — regarding how they have addressed false information related to the election as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.