YouTube will not remove popular ‘Trump Won’ video, despite the fact he has not

YouTube’s Community Guidelines do not affect videos which advocate interference once votes have been cast

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A video claiming that Donald Trump won the US presidential election, despite the race not being over and votes continuing to be tallied, does not violate YouTube’s policies, the company has said.

“Trump won. MSM [mainstream media] hopes you don’t believe your eyes,” was posted on 4 November by the verified One America News Network (OANN).

The far-right news network, which has been promoted by the president before, has nearly one million YouTube subscribers. At time of writing, the video has been watched nearly 400,000 times.

“President Trump won four more years in the office last night”, the video falsely claims, going on to say that swing states were called for Donald Trump despite votes still being tallied.

It also went on to say, incorrectly, that there was widespread voter fraud and there is no need for a delay to the vote counts.

This is despite the fact that states have regularly counted past previous election nights and such delays are a normal occurence – albeit one that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The video continues that Republicans should “take action” and call their secretaries of state.

However, YouTube told CNBC that the company’s Community Guidelines refer to videos that discourage voting but not to videos that advocate interference once votes have been cast.

The states mentioned in the video have not yet being called, and Trump supporters have stormed a Detroit convention centre where votes were being counted under the illusion that there was political malfeasance.

“Our Community Guidelines prohibit content misleading viewers about voting, for example content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting, or false claims that could materially discourage voting,” YouTube spokesperson Andrea Faville said.

“The content of this video doesn’t rise to that level, so it wasn’t removed.”

YouTube said that it also discontinued adverts on the video, so that OANN could not profit from views.

“We do not allow ads to run on content that undermines confidence in elections with demonstrably false information,” spokeswoman Christa Muldoon said.

“The election has not been called. Therefore, this is in scope of our demonstrably false policy and will be demonetised on YouTube.”

YouTube’s Community Guidelines also state that it would be “removing content encouraging others to interfere with democratic processes”; it is unclear whether YouTube considers videos encouraging citizens to take action against legitimate voter counts is interfering with the democratic process. The Independent has reached out to YouTube for comment.

OANN is a “kind of go-to echo chamber that people that already ascribe to, so the viewers can visit to reaffirm what they want to believe,” with a “high degree of allegiance to [the] far-right” Samuel Woolley, project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, previously told The Independent. 

“On a smaller scale – like Fox News but in a much more aggressively far-right way – it’s able to present its own version of the truth as it related to the present’s intentions and the intentions of the more extreme elements of the Republican Party.”

YouTube is not the only social media platform suffering to contain misinformation and disinformation during the presidential election.

Facebook has had to change its disinformation policies mid-way through the count after Donald Trump falsely claimed victory in swing states where votes are still being counted.

The company had accounted for declarations of victory on a national level, but did not previously act on similar calls on a state level.

In addition, it sent notifications on its main app and its subsidiary Instagram to inform users that the election has not yet finished in order to counter fake news.

Twitter also labelled tweets that falsely claim victory or promote other misinformation.

The flag is similar to the one that has already been applied to posts that spread misinformation about Covid-19, and mail-in voting, both of which have been done by president Trump.