Google-Owned YouTube To Remove Videos Challenging Biden’s Win Even As Election Lawsuits Continue
Online video-sharing platform, YouTube, has made public its plans to get rid of any content on the platform questioning the election win of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — which has so far only been proclaimed the winner by the mainstream media — and despite continuing legal challenges from the Trump campaign over election irregularities.
The platform owned by Google, which is often met with criticism for its liberal bias, said aside from cancelling voices questioning Biden’s victory, it will also promote “authoritative news sources,” such as NBC and CBS in its video recommendations — also news outlets largely seen to be more left-leaning.
🔴 LIVE: YouTube to delete content alleging election fraud; Trump says he will intervene in Texas SCOTUS election case | NTD News Today (Dec. 9) https://t.co/P3C7r6evyy
— NTD News (@news_ntd) December 9, 2020
In its December 9 blog post titled “Supporting the 2020 US election”, the video-sharing site also explicitly implied that it will block videos showing incumbent President Donald Trump questioning the election results despite reports of widespread voter fraud which led to his campaign filing legal lawsuits against multiple states.
“Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential elections and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect,” the liberal-leaning platform wrote in its post.
“Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors.
YouTube “purge” starts December 9
BREAKING: YouTube announces they will remove videos critical of the 2020 election, will promote corporate content only pic.twitter.com/tLyQX1VERB
— Petrol Smuggler Poso (@JackPosobiec) December 9, 2020
Holy shit just got this email from YouTube.
Starting today they will remove content about election fraud…even though there are court cases about election fraud going through the system at this very moment.
Adios free speech. The bannings are coming. pic.twitter.com/UqlVOSAdR6
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) December 9, 2020
You can still say there is evidence of widespread fraud
You can still say Trump actually won
You cannot combine the two
What strange times we live in
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) December 9, 2020
The Google-owned site said it will “begin enforcing this policy today” and the public could expect that it will “ramp up” its move to eliminate contents against Biden in the coming weeks.
“As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context,” it said.
In its announcement, YouTube said it will be promoting “authoritative news sources” — such as NBC and CBS — for top searches on its platform.
“We also showed information panels linking both 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,” it added.
Third-party fact-checkers on YouTube
“Starting today, we 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,” YouTube further said.
The video-sharing platform also said additionally, it will include “relevant fact-check information panels” from what it claimed as “third-party fact checkers” saying these were “triggered over 200,000 times above relevant election-related search results, including for voter fraud narratives such as “Dominion voting machines” and “Michigan recount.”
Despite claims of being independent, fact-checkers have also been slammed by conservatives for having liberal bias.
Recently, conservative author and commentator, Candace Owens, recently delivered a major blow to these so-called “third-party fact-checkers” by winning against Facebook fact-checker, Politifact, who tagged her post as “false” and effectively censored it from the social media platform.
Weeks ago, @Facebook censored a post of mine which truthfully stated that @JoeBiden is NOT the President-elect.
So I got lawyers involved.
Conclusion? @PolitiFact uncensored the post & admitted that they LIED by rating my post false.
The fact-checkers are lying for Democrats. pic.twitter.com/l2rrLxzku7— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 28, 2020
Twitter has also recently upped suspension of accounts often owned by conservatives questioning the election results.
Forbes reported that even President Trump’s social media accounts have not been spared with half of his posts on both Facebook and Twitter labeled as “false” or “questionable” by the social media giants — raising questions of censorship among conservatives and supporters of the incumbent Republican president.
Tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter have always been at odds with Republicans who accused the Silicon Valley-firms of silencing conservative voices in the social media platforms — threatening democracy and online freedom.
