BOSTON — YouTube said on Monday that it planned to remove misleading election-related content that can cause “serious risk of egregious harm,” the first time the video platform has comprehensively laid out how it will handle such political videos and viral falsehoods.
The Google-owned site, which previously had several different policies in place that addressed false or misleading content, rolled out the full plan on the day of the Iowa caucuses, when voters will begin to indicate their preferred Democratic presidential candidate.
“Over the last few years, we’ve increased our efforts to make YouTube a more reliable source for news and information, as well as an open platform for healthy political discourse,” Leslie Miller, the vice president of government affairs and public policy at YouTube, said in a blog post. She added that YouTube would be enforcing its policies “without regard to a video’s political viewpoint.” Continue reading.