YouTube stated Friday it can cease eradicating content material that falsely claims the 2020 election or different previous U.S. presidential elections had been marred by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches.”

The change is a reversal for the Google-owned video service, which stated a month after the 2020 election that it could begin eradicating new posts that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud or errors modified the end result.

YouTube stated in a weblog publish that the up to date coverage was an try to guard the flexibility 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 political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the weblog publish stated.

The up to date coverage, which matches into impact instantly, gained’t cease YouTube from taking down content material that tries to deceive voters within the upcoming 2024 election, or different future races within the U.S. and overseas. The firm stated its different present guidelines in opposition to election misinformation stay unchanged.

The announcement comes after YouTube and different main social media firms, together with Twitter and the Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, have come beneath hearth in recent times for not doing extra to fight the firehose of election misinformation and disinformation that spreads on their platforms.

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