YouTube videos that falsely claim Trump won election are allowed because they ‘discuss election results’, site says

Videos which falsely claim that Joe Biden did not win the presidential election will remain on YouTube because they are a “discussion of election results”, the company has said.

The Google-owned video giant had previously been criticized for failing to remove a video from right-wing news network One America News Network (OANN) stating that president Donald Trump won the US election while votes were still being tallied. 

Mr Trump had consistently undermined the integrity of the election with numerous claims of voter fraud and election rigging.

Following the election, OAN posted another video entitled: “Trump Won. The Elephant in the Room”.

The video falsely claims that Joe Biden is not the president-elect, holding “fake press briefings”, and that there is a “looming reality” that Mr Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris got “caught” because there is “so much evidence of organized voter fraud”.

This is despite US officials stating that they found no evidence votes in the presidential election were compromised in any way.

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,“ the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said.

The video also claims that Biden has accomplished “nothing” and does not “have his transition team in place”.

The Trump White House is blocking the administration from formally working with Biden, and Biden’s transition team are under orders not to have contact with current government officials, the Washington Post reports.

“Like other companies, we're allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YT”, YouTube said on Twitter.

“These videos are not being surfaced or recommended in any prominent way.” The company also removed ads from the video, meaning it cannot profit from views.

YouTube also claimed that the “popular videos about the election are from authoritative news organizations” and that “88 per cent of the videos in top-10 results in the U.S. come from high-auth sources when people search for election-related content”.

The day after election night, eight out of the 20 top results when users searched for "LIVE 2020 Presidential Election Results" presented false information on election day.

Four channels broadcasting false results were verified by YouTube. One channel broadcasting fake results had over 1.4 million subscribers.

“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,” YouTube spokesperson Andrea Faville previously said.

OANN is a “kind of go-to echo chamber that people that already ascribe to, so the viewers can visit to reaffirm what they want to believe,” with a “high degree of allegiance to [the] far-right” Samuel Woolley, project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, had told The Independent.

“On a smaller scale – like Fox News but in a much more aggressively far-right way – it’s able to present its own version of the truth as it related to the present’s intentions and the intentions of the more extreme elements of the Republican Party.”

Technology companies have struggled to rein in misinformation on their platforms, both from everyday users of their products and from the US government.

A vast proportion of Mr Trump’s tweets since the election have had to be flagged by Twitter in an attempt to stop the president from spreading false information.

Mr Trump’s account could be suspended or banned in future, as he will no longer be protected by Twitter’s public interest guidelines when he leaves office in January.