Experts Divided as YouTube Reverses Policy on Election Misinformation

An announcement by YouTube that it will no longer remove content containing misinformation on the U.S. 2020 presidential election has some experts divided. In a June blog post, YouTube said it was ending its policy — enforced since December 2020 — that removed tens of thousands of videos that falsely claimed the 2020 election was impaired by "widespread fraud, errors or glitches." "We find that while removing this content 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," the post said. The Google-owned platform says the move is to support free speech, but some experts in tech and disinformation say it could allow harmful content to again be easily shared. "The message that YouTube is sending is that the election denial crowd is now welcome again on YouTube and can resume its campaign of undermining trust in American elections and democratic institutions," said Paul Barrett, deputy director at New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. But others say the policy caused "legitimate" content to be removed and that the core issue is a wider societal problem, not something confined to YouTube. YouTube's other election misinformation policies remain unchanged, the platform said. These include prohibiting content aimed at misleading people about the time and place for voting and claims that could significantly discourage voting. Google spokesperson Ivy Choi told VOA in an email that the company has "nothing to add beyond what we shared in our blog post." Still, some U.S. lawmakers and experts are concerned about how harmful content circulates on YouTube. Representative Zoe Lofgren, who sat on the House January 6 committee, said the idea that election denial disinformation is "no longer harmful — including that they do not increase the risk of violence — is simply wrong." "The lies continue to have a dramatic impact on our democracy and on the drastic increase in threats faced by elected officials at all levels of government," Lofgren told VOA in an emailed statement. Lofgren, a Democrat from California, added that YouTube's parent company Alphabet should reconsider its decision. Justin Hendrix, founder and editor of the nonprofit website Tech Policy Press, questioned whether YouTube's policy had even been successful. "There is, to me, a bigger question about whether YouTube was ever really effectively removing information that promoted false claims about the 2020 election," Hendrix told VOA. "I wonder whether this is a capitulation to the reality that the company was never able to effectively take action against false claims in the 2020 election." YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States, and it has over 2 billion users around the world. But despite the platform's popularity, it has escaped the level of scrutiny given to Twitter and Facebook, according to Barrett. The main reason: the difficulty in analyzing videos in bulk. YouTube is the main place people go for videos on innocuous things like how to fix your car or do your makeup, said Barrett. "But it's also the go-to place for video for people with extreme political ideas," he added. Videos on YouTube amplified the false narratives that the 2020 election was rigged and that the entire American election system is corrupt, according to a 2022 report Barrett and Hendrix co-authored, A Platform 'Weaponized': How YouTube Spreads Harmful Content – And What Can Be Done About It. Election misinformation was also cited by the January 6 committee as it investigated the circumstances that resulted in a mob of former President Donald Trump's supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on the day the election results were due to be certified. In a report on the insurrection, the committee said the platform "included efforts to boost authoritative content" and that it "labeled election fraud claims — but did so anemically." Some free-speech experts like Jennifer Stisa Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, believe the policy change is good. "There have been some legitimate discussions about voting and the legitimacy of the election that have been adversely impacted" under the former policy, Granick said. "Election disinformation was not spread by YouTube or other online platforms, but by [Trump] himself. And the misinformation that circulates online is a drop in the bucket compared to what the [former] president of the United States says," Granick said. The bigger problem, she said, is that for some political candidates, "election denial is a fundamental part of their campaigns." People who complain that YouTube is evading its responsibility are "looking to the platform to solve a social and political problem that the United States has," Granick said. Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, believes any policy that openly fosters free speech is worthwhile. "But calls to violence, which may accompany some of this discourse, would still not be protected," Gutterman told VOA. Barrett, however, is concerned that the reversal creates the potential for YouTube to be exploited. The broader effect, Barrett said, "is the erosion of trust more generally" — not just in American elections. Studies have shown that exposure to misinformation and disinformation is tied to lower trust in the media. The YouTube policy change is hardly the main cause of that process, Barrett said, but it's a contributing factor. The policy change comes as several major social media companies face criticism for failing to quell election misinformation and disinformation on their platforms. The recent development with YouTube is part of a broader trend in the tech industry, according to Hendrix. "I'm concerned that we're seeing across the board almost a kind of throwing up the hands around some of these issues," he said, pointing to staff layoffs, including those in trust and safety departments. All of these factors contribute to "an erosion of even more than democracy," Barrett said. "That's an erosion of the social connections that hold society together."