The decision, which comes ahead of the 2024 election, reverses a policy implemented in December 2020 after President Joe Biden won the election.
Google-owned YouTube will stop removing false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race, the video platform announced Friday.
YouTube said in a blog post that it made the decision to balance its twin goals of “protecting our community and providing a home for open discussion and debate.” The decision, which comes ahead of the 2024 election, reverses a policy implemented in December 2020 after President Joe Biden won the election.
“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals and an election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reassess the impact of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube wrote. “In the current environment, we find that while removing this content reduces some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of limiting political discourse without substantially reducing the risk of violence or other real harm.”
In the 2020 election, the company faced backlash for slow action in flagging and removing videos that showed misinformation or falsely claimed widespread voter fraud. Following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, YouTube said it will begin suspending channels that make false claims of widespread voter fraud
As of March 2023, YouTube had already lifted the restrictions placed on Trump’s account after the January 6 uprising.
YouTube said aspects of its election disinformation policy remain in place, including flagging authoritative sources in search and recommendations, and banning posts aimed at misleading voters about where and how to vote.
