Youtube declined to take down a video posted on the platform that accuses Democrats of voter fraud despite its existing community guidelines that talk about voting interference.
On Wednesday morning, said the video was posted by the right-leaning news media, with the title “Trump won.”
In the video, news anchor Christina Bobb can be heard saying, “President Trump won four more years in the office last night.”
The social media platform refused to remove a video that shows One American News Network news anchor, Christina Bobb talking about how the Democrats had committed voter fraud against republicans. Youtube stood by its decision despite acknowledging that this could undermine the confidence in elections.
Bobb then alleges that there was a “rampant voter fraud” committed against Trump through the ballots that were submitted. She then asked the viewers to “rise up” and “take action” against the Democrats.
Youtube maintained that they would not take down the said video despite their existing policy of removing content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes. The policy to quote states, “encouraging others to interfere with democratic processes, such as obstructing or interrupting voting procedures.”
The platform also tightened its policies and included among their modifications is to remove conspiracy theory-driven videos that could result in real-life violence.
After this controversial video of One American News Network, Andrea Faville, Youtube spokesperson, explained that the company “Community Guidelines” refers only to videos that discourage voting. It also does not apply to videos that speak about interference after votes had already been cast.
In an email to CNBC, Faville wrote, “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,”
“American flag and white flag with vote text on white background” (CC BY 2.0) by Marco Verch
Faville also stated that the video’s content does not rise to this level, as stated in their community guidelines, which is why it was not removed.
However, Youtube claimed that they instead discontinued ads on the video, which would then eliminate the revenue streams for the video owner.
In addition to this, Christa Muldoon, spokeswoman of Youtube, stated that “We do not allow ads to run on content that undermines confidence in elections with demonstrably false information,”
These confusing statements given by the platform come after other social media companies had faced tremendous pressure to check misinformation while at the same time avoiding political bias, particularly those that have anything to do with the US elections 2020.
Moreover, the video posted by One American News Network also claimed that the Democrat leaders have been “tossing Republican ballots,” and the party was also “harvesting fake ballots.”
Bobb was also quoted saying, “The Democrat party wants to hold Americans hostage, and they’ll use violence to do it. Democrats are boldly cheating because they think they have you fooled. Let them know they aren’t fooling anyone.”
When the video was posted, two hours later, it already garnered 150,000 views.
The news anchor was also seen urging viewers to “rise” and “take action.” Then phone numbers of the Secretary of State were flashed on the screen for the viewers to call.
In addition to this, the same news network again posted another video entitled “DAY 2. TRUMP WON. DEMS TRYING TO PULL FAST ONE.”
The video started with Bobb claiming that Trump won. However, Democrats think Americans are stupid and that the party tried to claim battleground states.
Although there were no ads that were running on these videos, as of today, it can still be accessed on Youtube.
