In a post published Wednesday, YouTube announced updates to their “work supporting the integrity of the 2020 U.S. election” on their official blog.
According to YouTube, which is owned by Google, their main goal during the election was to ensure they were “connecting people with authoritative information, while also limiting the reach of misinformation and removing harmful content.” These efforts, they say, are ongoing, which is why they’ve decided to post an update.
What exactly do they mean by “supporting the integrity” of the 2020 election?
After patting themselves on the back for terminating “over 8000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos,” they attempt to explain how they are monitoring content.
We also work to make sure that the line between what is removed and what is allowed is drawn in the right place. Our policies prohibit misleading viewers about where and how to vote. We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election. However in some cases, that has meant allowing controversial views on the outcome or process of counting votes of a current election as election officials have worked to finalize counts.
Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. 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.
There you have it. It turns out that “supporting the integrity” means censoring videos that allege voter fraud.
The Trump legal team still has active challenges to the election results in several states. Mike Kelly et al. v. Pennsylvania, et al. and Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. are two pending cases before the Supreme Court. There are many, many witnesses who have signed affidavits alleging voter fraud in various states.
But, according to YouTube, you don’t have a right to see that evidence or be told that fraud even occurred. Your ability to view content and make your own decision about the evidence is superseded by their desire to keep you in the dark about not just mere allegations, but evidence as well. Will YouTube not allow live-streaming of hearings alleging ballot fraud too? Should the Supreme Court take up any of the current challenges, will any coverage related to those challenges be allowed on their platform?
Assuming anything related to voter fraud in the 2020 election is censored from YouTube, what alternatives do you have? My suggestion: ditch YouTube and join Rumble, a video-sharing platform that is the “free speech” alternative to YouTube.
“We don’t censor political debate or dialogue,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski tweeted last month. “We welcome all viewpoints.”
I started a Rumble account earlier this month and uploaded some recent videos there. I will not bother with YouTube anymore. It’s not worth it.
YouTube not only doesn’t welcome conservative viewpoints, but it clearly is trying to hide information from the public by promising to delete content that challenges the results of the 2020 election.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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