How does YouTube remove policy violative election-related content?
Our Community Guidelines provide clear guidance on content that is not allowed on YouTube. These policies also apply to election-related content. We use a combination of people and machine learning to detect potentially problematic content at scale. Once such content is identified, human review verifies whether it violates our policies. If it does, the content is removed and is used to train our machines for better coverage in the future.
Here are some examples of where our established deceptive practices policies apply:
-
Content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users (beyond clips taken out of context) and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm; for example, a video that has been technically manipulated to make it appear that a government official is dead.
-
Content that aims to mislead people about voting or the census processes, like telling viewers an incorrect voting date.
-
Content that advances false claims related to the technical eligibility requirements for current political candidates and sitting elected officials to serve in office, such as false claims that a candidate is not eligible to hold office based on false information about citizenship status requirements to hold office in that country.
Additionally, we terminate channels that:
-
Attempt to impersonate another person or channel, misrepresent their country of origin, or conceal their association with a government actor.
-
Artificially increase the number of views, likes, comments, or other metric either through the use of automatic systems or by serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers.
As always, we enforce our policies consistently, without regard to a video’s political viewpoint.
How does YouTube combat foreign interference in electoral processes?
To combat foreign and domestic coordinated influence operations looking to interfere in electoral processes, we coordinate closely with Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) to identify bad actors and terminate their channels and accounts. Through TAG, we work with other technology companies to share intelligence and best practices, and share threat information with law enforcement.
How does YouTube give viewers access to authoritative election-related news?
Political news and events can be subject to misinformation, so the availability of quality information sources is crucial. That’s why we raise up authoritative voices, including news sources like CNN and Fox News, for news and information in search results and “Up next” panels. Additionally, we have a number of product features that help highlight content across our platform, including Top News and Breaking News shelves to highlight quality journalism, as well as information panels that indicate funding sources below videos from publishers that receive public or government funding.
In addition to our always-on product features that raise information from authoritative sources on our platform, we take additional efforts during key civics and election moments. For instance, when there are major live moments -- like the State of the Union, election debates and presidential inaugurations -- we work to make these streams easily accessible to a wide audience on our platform.
For the 2018 U.S. midterm and the 2019 EU Parliamentary elections, when users searched for a candidate on YouTube, we surfaced an information panel with additional information about that candidate—for example, party affiliation and district—above search results. We also highlighted the official YouTube channels of candidates when available. We plan to have a similar feature for candidates in the 2020 U.S. elections.
What YouTube tools and resources are available to candidates and political Creators?
Through the YouTube Partner Program, eligible creators—including news organizations, political creators and candidates on both sides of the aisle—can access a greater suite of YouTube features and resources, including support from a dedicated partnerships team to build their presence on YouTube -- helping them to more effectively reach viewers, engage their community, and keep their accounts secure.
Resources
How does YouTube treat political advertising?
Given the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters' confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms. Our advertising policies provide users with visibility into who is buying election ads on YouTube, Google, and partner properties.