YouTube to remove content critical of 2020 election results, will feature corporate content instead

In another striking blow to conservative content, YouTube announced on Wednesday that it would no longer allow content on its platform that discusses or alleges voter fraud stemming from the 2020 general election. They intend to remove those videos entirely, and will instead promote corporate content.

In a blog post, under the heading "Connecting people to authoritative information," YouTube wrote that their search function for election news resulted in "88% of the videos in top 10 search results" coming from "authoritative news sources," such as "news channels like NBC and CBS."

YouTube also linked to "Google’s election results feature, which sources election results from The Associated Press, and to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) 'Rumor Control' page for debunking election integrity misinformation, alongside these and over 200,000 other election-related videos."

In a series of tweets, they wrote "Our goal this election was to connect people to authoritative info, limit harmful misinfo & remove violative content. Subsequently, authoritative news was widely watched & recommended, and since Sept, we removed 8K+ channels for violating our policies." The announcement comes now because the safe harbor deadline has passed, meaning that the election results that have been certified will stand.

This they pushed over content alleging that there could be issues with absentee balloting or voter irregularities. They state that the "information panels" from Google were "shown over 4.5 billion times."

On Wednesday, they "will update this information panel, linking to the '2020 Electoral College Results' page from the Office of the Federal Register, noting that as of December 8, states have certified Presidential election results, with Joe Biden as the President-elect. It will also continue to include a link to CISA, explaining that states certify results after ensuring ballots are properly counted and correcting irregularities and errors."

Stating that "There’s always more to do," YouTube said that "Striking the balance between openness & responsibility is one of our toughest challenges. We're continuing to make improvements & will apply our learnings from this election, globally."