YouTube to delete new videos that claim fraud in US elections

YouTube on Wednesday announced plans to remove content which falsely alleges fraud in the 2020 US presidential elections, in which a ferocious competition between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is set to culminate in the latter’s victory.

After Biden was announced the President-elect, Donald Trump’s team claimed fraud, and filed multiple lawsuits across different states, many of which have been dropped. His request for recounting was accepted in several others, and denied in others.

Regardless, it is now clear that Joe Biden is the rightfully elected president of the US starting end of January.

The announcement was made a day after “safe harbor” day, which is a deadline in accordance with US law wherein states are required to certify the results of the election.

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Even before the elections began, all content and social media sites have been under pressure to tackle false information on their websites.

YouTube is owned by Google, which has taken a different approach than Facebook and Twitter, which have labelled misleading information clearly. Twitter has repeatedly labelled many of Trump’s tweets as misinformation or as carrying misleading information.

In November, Democratic senators asked YouTube to start removing content with false or misleading information about the 2020 presidential elections, along with the Senate elections in Georgia.

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Reuters had earlier reported that many channels on youTube were profiting off false information about the elections, and by pushing the disproven claim of elections fraud.

On Wednesday, YouTube said that it had removed 8,000 channels and thousands of election-related videos that propelled false information.

It added that over 70% of election related content on YouTube came from credible news sources.