YouTube Won’t Distinguish Between Misinformation and Reporting, So It Suspended My Channel
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The politics morning show “Rising,” produced by The Hill and which I currently co-host, was suspended by YouTube on Thursday for allegedly violating the platform’s rules around election misinformation. Two infractions were cited: First, the outlet posted the full video of former President Donald Trump’s recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on its page. The speech, of course, was chock full of craziness. Second, “Rising” played a minutelong clip of Trump’s commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which included the claim that none of it would have happened if not for a “rigged election.”
The crime, we learned, that got the show suspended for seven days from its platform was that neither I nor my co-host, Robby Soave, paused to solemnly inform our viewers that Trump’s phrase — “a rigged election” — referred to his ongoing claim that the election was stolen from him in 2020 and that this claim is false.
De-platforming any mention of a “rigged election” hasn’t done anything to slow the theory down. Since YouTube and other platforms cracked down on Trump’s election fraud nonsense in late 2020, the belief that the election was rigged has only grown, particularly among Republicans. And the policy has actually stifled a rational response. As Soave pointed out in Reason, “Not only does YouTube punish channels that spread misinformation, but in many cases, it also punishes channels that report on the spread of misinformation.”
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