A video on YouTube by pro-Trump network One American News Network (OANN) claimed that Donald Trump has already won the 2020 U.S. election, despite the vote counting has not been completed yet and there’s no clear winner. Major news outlets have not yet announced a winner for the election itself, either.
The video titled “Trump Won. MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes” starts with a news anchor claiming that Trump has “won four more years in office last night”. The video then continues to claim “rampant voter fraud” against Republican ballots while urging viewers to “take action” against Democrats. The video has more than 300,000 views.
Despite information in the video being incorrect and potentially harmful, the video doesn’t cross the line according to YouTube. According to a YouTube spokesperson, their current policies regarding misinformation and the election only include removing content that aims to “mislead voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting, or false claims that could materially discourage voting”.
“The content of this video doesn’t rise to that level, so it wasn’t removed,” the spokesperson explained.
However, YouTube said it discontinued ads on the video—eliminating the revenue stream. Since the election has not been called yet, the video is in violation of YouTube’s advertising policy—which won’t let ads run on videos undermining election confidence through demonstrably false information.
The platform also mentions that they’ve took down several livestreams related to the election for violating its spam policies. But Bloomberg writer Mark Bergen tweeted that misleading content can still show up on livestreams.
In a stark contrast, Facebook and Twitter has been aggressively handling misinformation in various ways. Facebook removed a specific feature in the United States within Instagram’s hashtags to try and slow down the spread of misinformation that could result in voter suppression.
Facebook has also added a notification at the bottom of posts about elections about added information along with sources. Claims about the election being won is also followed by a note by Facebook about how the votes are still being counted.
On Twitter, the platform has aggressively labeled tweets from people—including President Trump—falsely claiming that mail-in voting has led to inaccurate results. Tweets that might be misleading is also hidden by the platform, but they are not completely deleted.
To keep updated about the U.S. election, you can keep track of Reuters’ live elections graphics page. Al Jazeera also has a live elections page that you can follow.
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