This is a bad thing in any event, but most particularly heading into an election year. Axios is reporting that YouTube has reversed its election integrity policy and will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections. This is catastrophic. This is throwing red meat to Kari Lake and the crazies.
Why it matters: YouTube established the policy in December 2020, after enough states had certified the 2020 election results. Now, the company said in a statement, leaving the policy in place may have the effect of “curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”
- “Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube said in a statement.
- “With that in mind, and 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 US Presidential elections.”
Yes, but: Asked how YouTube was specifically able to make that determination, a spokesperson pointed Axios to their statement.
- YouTube said that it “carefully deliberated this change,” but didn’t provide further examples of what factors or instances it considered when weighing its decision.
- The platform said it will provide more details about its approach to the 2024 election in the months to come.
If there is a positive way to look at this, I don’t see it. Election denialism is pernicious. People need to be able to trust the elections system and they did prior to Donald Trump’s inability to accept defeat.
Christopher Krebs, who was the head of cybersecurity certified that the election was “the most secure in history.” That ought to be the definitive bottom line. But it’s not. Now we are told that destructive hearsay and conspiracy theory is part of freedom of speech and it is not.
Heaven help us. One day, possibly even this coming election, we are going to have a close election and with this madness of election denialism going on, the wrong person may get into the White House.
This is a sad day! Most people love utube, they don’t NEED to let RW lies, conspiracy & Propaganda, rip-away at OUR Democracy! Now I must BOYCOTT this RW Media TRAITOR!
Their statement talks of “carefully considering” the matter – that consideration was purely the question of “will we make more money by giving the crazies free reign?” Obviously the answer they came up with was yes. I hope they pay through the nose (by nose I mean bank account) for their choice.
Money and views talk…
YouTube’s owned by Google, now known as Alphabet. Wikipedia quotes Alphabet as having assets worth $365 billion as of 2022. Looks like that’s just not enough to satisfy its boardroom greed, so it’s going to rake in more money from the traitors and enemies of democracy by pumping out their insane and insanely dangerous conspiracy fantasies supporting Trump’s big lie. I suspect it was inspired by Musk’s lunacy over at Twitter, where he now sells certification of worth tokens instead of awarding them for actual ethical value of accounts. Our battered democracy cannot resist this kind of attack-from-within for long, and I see no savior from the federal government in sight.