"Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way," 31 October 2024

In June 2023, YouTube decided to stop fighting the most persistent strain of election misinformation in the United States: the falsehood that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump... The largest video platform [allegedly] became a home for election conspiracy theories, half-truths and lies...

From May through August, researchers at Media Matters tracked 30 of the most popular YouTube channels they identified as persistently spreading election misinformation, to analyze the narratives they shared in the run-up to November’s election.

The 30 conservative channels posted 286 videos containing election misinformation, which racked up more than 47 million views... Some commentators also made money from those videos and other monetized features available to members of the YouTube Partner Program...

A YouTube spokeswoman said that the company reviewed eight videos, identified by The Times, and that those did not violate its community guidelines.

“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season,” she said in a statement. “Most” of the 30 tracked channels are “ineligible for advertising,” and some had previously violated the company’s content policies, the spokeswoman added. “This report demonstrates our consistent approach to enforcing our policies.”

YouTube said it removes videos that mislead voters on how to vote, encourage election interference or make violent threats.

Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube’s chief business officer, described the platform’s approach to the election as “cautious and vigilant” in a September interview. “We have significant investment in this area in terms of making sure that first and foremost we’re raising authoritative content, and then we are removing or reducing things that might represent misinformation,” said Ms. Coe, who was not directly responding to the Media Matters research...

YouTube declined to comment on whether it would reimpose a ban on misinformation about the outcome of the race after states certified the votes, as it did in 2020.

YouTube removed... three of the videos that Media Matters found and placed information labels that link to factual information on 21 of them, though most of the election labels were later removed...