YouTube will stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 election or other past U.S. presidential elections were marred by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches,” the platform announced Friday.

The change is a reversal for the Google-owned video service, which said a month after the 2020 election that it would start removing new posts that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud or errors changed the outcome.

What You Need To Know

• YouTube says it will stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 election and other past U.S. presidential elections were marred by widespread fraud, errors or glitches


• The Google-owned video service said in a blog post Friday that it wanted to avoid the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm


• The updated policy will not stop YouTube from removing material that attempts to deceive voters in future elections, including the upcoming 2024 presidential election


• The change comes as YouTube and other major social media companies have come under fire for not doing more to combat election misinformation

YouTube said in a blog post that the updated policy was an attempt to protect the ability to “openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions.”

“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing...

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