YouTube struggles to stop election misinformation
YouTube videos endorsing the false idea that there was widespread election fraud were viewed more than 138 million times on the week of Nov. 3, according to a report from an independent research project that has been studying misinformation trends on the video site.
The report by the project, called Transparency. tube, looked at videos on YouTube that supported claims of voter fraud during the November elections, as well as videos that disputed such claims. Overall, the researchers identified 4,865 videos, viewed a combined 409 million times, that mentioned voter fraud.
The YouTube videos supporting claims of voter fraud accounted for 34% of all views in the data set studied, while those disputing the voter fraud claims or remaining neutral accounted for 66% of views among the videos the research project identified.
YouTube does not release data about the total number of videos uploaded to the site weekly. The company has said that 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Many of the largest YouTube channels can rack up millions of views each day. For example, CNN, which has more than 11 million subscribers to its YouTube channel, uploaded 51 videos during the week of Nov. 3. Those videos were viewed 69 million times, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Some of the mostwatched videos disputing the results of the election include two videos by the rightwing news outlet BlazeTV, which were viewed 1.3 million times. Videos by the rightwing news outlets Newsmax and OANN that spread claims of widespread voter fraud were also viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
False claims, as varied as reports of malfunctioning voting machines and intentionally miscounted mailin votes, have been widely circulated on all social media services, including YouTube. Election officials and journalists investigating voter fraud have found no evidence for claims of widespread voter fraud.
YouTube has said that videos disputing voter fraud allegations were more widely viewed on its platform than those supporting it, but has declined to give numbers.
“The mostviewed videos related to ‘ voter fraud’ are all from authoritative news channels and the majority of electionrelated searches and recommendations are surfacing results from authoritative sources,” said Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman. He added that panels linking to a “Rumor Control” page debunking potential areas of electionrelated misinformation were shown billions of times.
The researchers behind the Transparency. tube report said YouTube’s statements told only part of the story. The report, the researchers said, showed that not only were significant numbers of people watching videos filled with misinformation about voter fraud, they were reaching those videos even though YouTube was directing them elsewhere.
“Videos supporting accusations of widespread voter fraud have been popular despite YouTube’s video recommendations,” said Mark Ledwich, a cofounder of Transparency. tube. He said that people were arriving at videos filled with misinformation through “direct links, channel subscriptions or search.”