While Facebook and Twitter have been flagging some tweets and labeling a few posts by President Donald Trump as misleading, claiming they violate the platforms' policies regarding spreading disinformation, YouTube, on the other hand, isn't adopting any such strategy. The popular video-sharing platform decided not to remove a video claiming President Donald Trump won because it did not violate its policies about election misinformation.
According to YouTube, the aforesaid video wherein the POTUS claims he won the presidential election did not go against any of its policies and decided against removing it from the platform. This comes when none of the major news outlets have called the election for either candidate.
YouTube's move is a stark difference from how the other two social media giants, Facebook and Twitter, are handling misinformation surrounding election results. Both platforms are leaving no stone unturned in a bid to clamp down on such claims and pieces of baseless information over the recently concluded election or its results, The Verge reported.
Entitled, Trump Won. MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes. The video was posted by OANN (One American News Network), which is known to be a Trump supporter, on Wednesday. While YouTube admitted that the video violated its advertising guidelines, the platform denied that it goes against its content policies, noting that it can stay on the platform, but it won't show ads. This was originally reported by CNBC.
The video shows an OANN anchor announcing that Trump won the presidential election, going on to claim that the only reason Trump would not win several swing states is voter fraud, and even compares mail-in ballots counting to an attempt to steal the election. While the piece of information shared in this video isn't correct, YouTube doesn't plan to remove it.
The company's spokesperson explained that the platform's current policies about misinformation and the presidential election refer to content targetted to mislead American voters about various factors such as eligibility requirements, place, time, and means to vote. In addition to that, YouTube's policies pertain to false claims that could prevent voting.
Bloomberg's Mark Bergen tracked some instances where content comprising misleading information has made appearances on the website through live streams. One of YouTube's policies restricts creators or companies from using description, thumbnails, or tags that lead them to believe the content is something that it actually is not.
Interestingly, YouTube had decided not to remove Trump's video, although it claims that he won the election when he had not. The platform merely removed ads from the OANN video, instead.