Thursday, December 10, 2020

YouTube bans content questioning legitimacy of US elections - Eitan Divinsky

 

​ by Eitan Divinsky

 Hat tip: Dr. Carolyn Tal

The video-sharing platform announced it would 'terminate' thousands of 'harmful and misleading elections-related videos.'

 

Breitbart News reported that Google-owned video-sharing network YouTube announced it will remove content questioning Biden’s election win or alleging fraud effected the final results.

"Our main goal going into the election season was to make sure we’re connecting people with authoritative information, while also limiting the reach of misinformation and removing harmful content," opened a statement from the video-sharing platform.

The social media platform admitted to "terminating" more than 8,000 channels along with "thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos" and said it would remove all claims that "widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election."

YouTube said that while it had continued allowing "controversial views" on election results, but that with Biden receiving enough electoral votes to certify his victory, it would no longer tolerate "content… that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election…," adding that "videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors" would be removed.

The platform took the opportunity to provide free publicity for liberal news networks it deemed "authoritative," stating that, "…the most viewed [election-related] channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS" and urged views to stick to "authoritative election news," while "limiting the reach of borderline content" in order to "protect [them] from problematic content..." It further boasted that "authoritative news channels" had received "over 70% of recommendations on election-related topics" and were "recommended over 14 times more than the top 10 non-authoritative channels…"

After stating that there was more work left to be done to discourage viewers from accessing "problematic content," YouTube called for a "broad range of political speech." The final part of the sentence, however, stuck a slightly different note, vowing to "[ensure] our platform isn't abused to incite real-world harm or broadly spread harmful misinformation."

 

Eitan Divinsky  

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/292876 

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