US President Donald Trump and his supporters have been claiming that the outcome of the US Presidential Election was a fraudulent one, making way for widespread misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media. YouTube being one of the largest sources of information today, has been plagued with misleading videos supporting these claims.
On Wednesday, the video sharing platform announced that they plan on taking down any new content making similar claims.
In a post published on their official blog, YouTube stated that they have been working round the clock to tackle misinformation on their platform, especially since the beginning of the 2020 Presidential Election Campaign. Since September, they’ve had to terminate around 8000 videos and thousands of channels for spreading misinformation related to the US elections.
The new update applies to videos uploaded after Dec 8, the safe harbor deadline for the US election. Safe harbor deadline is the final date by which states should finalize & certify the election result and the Congress should count the Electoral College votes. As enough states have certified the results, YouTube said that they’ll delete any new videos that spread misleading information about the election result with claims such as ‘software glitches’ or ‘counting errors’.
The new update could be helpful in putting an end to conspiracy theories surrounding the election result. And with the results becoming conclusive, Trump’s concession is expected to happen soon. President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn into office on January 20, 2021.
YouTube also claimed in their statement that in order to maintain transparency, they have only highlighted authorized and official election information on their site. They sourced their election results from Associated Press and debunked misinformation using the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Rumor Control page.