With several elections scheduled for the year, globally, and campaigns for the November 3rd US Presidential Elections well underway, the streaming giant, YouTube, has announced its decision to regulate and ban doctored or fake videos that might mislead voters, inadvertently affecting the global electoral process.
Stringent Safety Measures
The video streaming platform, which was purchased by Google LLC in 2006, announced in a blog post on Monday that, although it already has some policies in place to curb the spread of patently false information, it has now added a ‘deceptive-practices policy’ that will better address unreliable content that attempts to mislead the public about candidates, parties and the election process.
“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, YouTube’s vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy, wrote in the blog post.
According to the site, tackling some of the impediments to “healthy political discourse” will involve removing technically doctored content that poses a “serious risk of egregious harm” to political candidates, incorrect information about voting dates and the shutdown of any channel that violates its new policies.
Also, channels will be deleted if they “impersonate another person or channel, misrepresent their country of origin, or conceal their association with a government actor.”
Finally, channels will be yanked from the site if they have been found to be guilty of inflation of views, likes, and comments on their videos.
Politics in the Era of “Fake News”
Popularised by US President Donald Trump, fake news has become a regular topic in the general discourse of campaigning and elections. The advent of modern-day technology has made it easy for the alteration and manipulation of content in the media –especially social media– in a bid to sway public opinion and influence voting.
An example of this can be seen inthe viral video featuring House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that saw a slowed-down version of the Californian representative that was manipulated to create the illusion of alcoholic intoxication.
A separate statement by Google’s Head of Online Trust and Safety, Kristie Canegallo, said the internet giant has stepped up its efforts to stem abuse and false information on election content. “Our trust and safety teams span the globe to monitor and disrupt account hijackings, inauthentic activity, disinformation campaigns, coordinated attacks, and other forms of abuse on our platforms on a 24/7 basis,” Canegallo said. “We take seriously our responsibility to protect our users from harm and abuse, especially during elections.”
