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YouTube won’t remove a video falsely claiming Trump won the election

With votes in the US election still being counted, some people have taken to claiming that President Donald Trump has already won though this is demonstrably false as of time of writing.

While the likes of Facebook and Twitter have moved quickly to stop this misinformation from spreading unabated, some platforms just aren’t.

Case in point is YouTube.

The news organisation One America News Network (OANN) has published a video on YouTube with the title “Trump won. MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes.”

The video opens with anchor Christina Bobb stating “President Trump won four more years in office last night. North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin are all Trump’s even Arizona, which some how has Biden winning is rampant with voter fraud”.

The mental gymnastics it takes to claim Trump has won, but then in the same breath state that there is rampant voter fraud is rather impressive.

The video is quite clearly false and misinformation but as of time of writing it’s still available to watch. We won’t be sharing that video here as that would be irresponsible of us.

But why has YouTube allowed this misinformation to remain online?

Quite simply, it doesn’t violate YouTube’s community guidelines, according to YouTube.

“Our Community Guidelines prohibit content misleading viewers about voting, for example content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting, or false claims that could materially discourage voting,” spokesperson for YouTube, Andrea Faville, told CNBC.

“The content of this video doesn’t rise to that level, so it wasn’t removed,” the spokesperson added.

Unfortunately for OANN, its video will be demonetised as YouTube doesn’t allow ads to run on content that “undermines confidence in elections with demonstrably false information”.

YouTube’s lack of action here however is notable considering how platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have reacted to misinformation.

In the last 24 hours Twitter has labelled several tweets from Trump as misleading or stating that official sources have not yet called the result of the election.

Ahead of the election Facebook tip-toed around blocking content posted by Trump before deciding that the President’s messages were in fact dangerous.

The issue with this video from OANN remaining up is that it can be used by those looking to sow discontent and misinformation. Simply put, grifters.

A quick search reveals that this video is currently being shared fervently by Trump supporters. While there are some users pointing out the mistakes in the video, many more are simply retweeting the video blindly without questioning its content.

Worse still the video urges governors to call results for Trump while votes are being counted. OANN even asks citizens to harass election officials to call the results for Trump.

This, is why content such as this needs to carry a warning, although this year we’ve seen so many attacks on facts and fact checkers we have to wonder if an information box would even help at this stage.

If anything, this election has reiterated that social media is a mess and perhaps regulating the sector isn’t such a bad idea after all.

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