YouTube faces complaints for lax approach to election misinformation abroad

After facing stiff criticism for not doing enough to stem disinformation ahead of the US presidential election, YouTube announced last week that it would remove videos that alleged fraud changed the contest outcome.

But halfway around the world in Myanmar, which held a general election just five days after the U.S. vote and faced a wave of online disinformation, including unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, the new rules do not apply.

Researchers on social media and civil society groups in Myanmar say the uneven standard is emblematic of YouTube’s relatively hands-off approach to electoral disinformation around the world at a time when rival Facebook is taking hold. more aggressive country-by-country measures.

“It looks like 2020 could be Facebook’s YouTube equivalent of 2016, hoping that a one-size-fits-all approach might work, although it’s clear it won’t,” said Evelyn Douek, professor at Harvard Law. School that does research online. speech.

Experts, including Douek, warn this problem will only make Alphabet’s YouTube worse in other elections around the world, until it creates policies that consider its role in potentially volatile situations .

With other platforms, you’re at least starting to recognize that universal rules just aren’t going to cut it. For the US and Myanmar elections, Facebook has tried to learn from the criticisms it received and to deploy separate policies, she said. Reuters.

YouTube did not respond to these criticisms, but said it consistently followed its guidelines and removed more than 1.8 million channels for violating policies in the third quarter of 2020, including more than 54,000 for hate speech. .

Facebook, which was accused of helping incite genocide in Myanmar in 2017, launched an unusual civic disinformation policy reserved for Myanmar ahead of the recent elections, allowing it to suppress false claims that could lead to voter suppression or otherwise damage the electoral process.

The temporary policy, a first for Facebook on electoral disinformation, followed previous Sri Lanka-specific measures to tackle disinformation that could lead to violence that eventually spread worldwide.

The company has also forged partnerships with civil society organizations in Myanmar, who claim that the platform’s performance during elections, while imperfect, has improved.

Alphabet’s YouTube, on the other hand, took a light-hearted approach and appeared to block only false election statements that people were complaining about, or if the material violated its broader guidelines on hate speech and harassment, said researchers.

“When it comes to hate speech and disinformation in Myanmar, YouTube is the new frontier,” said Victoire Rio, advisor to the Myanmar Tech Accountability Network (MTAN), a consortium of civil society organizations that study the risks on social networks.

Rio told Reuters that the video-sharing site was unprepared and had not made the necessary investments to mitigate the risks in Myanmar, asking it to do a human rights impact assessment.

Rio and fact-checking organizations say disinformation providers joined YouTube in droves in 2020, as video streaming usage skyrocketed thanks to cheaper data plans, with more than half the population Myanmar now online.

A Reuters review revealed more than a dozen newly created YouTube channels that promoted misinformation related to Myanmar’s elections while masquerading as news organizations or political programs. Myanmar fact-checking organizations claim that hundreds of such chains appeared in 2020.

The reach of these channels varied, with the most popular racking up millions of views, far more than most accredited media. A November video incorrectly stating that the ruling party had already chosen a new president has been viewed more than 350,000 times.

Half of the channels had their corresponding Facebook pages deleted by Facebook for violating content rules in the past two months. But YouTube links from the same banned creators were still widely shared on Facebook.

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YouTube says in its guidelines that it removes political disinformation only when it specifically relates to false allegations about a voting process, or if it breaks other rules.

“Our community policy prohibits spam, scams or other manipulated media, coordinated influence operations and any content that seeks to incite violence,” a YouTube spokesperson told Reuters.

She said YouTube had “terminated” a number of channels for violating its hate speech and harassment policies, but did not say whether the platform had a Burmese team or ‘a local Trusted Flaggers program that allows recognized groups to report problematic content. .

YouTube has argued in blog posts that it is also reducing the spread of disinformation by pushing people to authoritative sources.

But democracy advocates say that is not enough.

A recent YouTube search for the word fraud in the Burmese language revealed as a third result a channel filled with videos which allege, without proof, that the ruling party committed fraud during the Myanmar elections.

Further searches of election-related terms have shown other channels containing political disinformation in the best results.

Yatanar Htun, director of the Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO), which monitors hate speech online, told Reuters YouTube videos were used in fake emails to voters spoofing emails from Burmese authorities to allege fraud and foreign interference.

Facebook deleted the original page sharing the videos, but YouTube has been slow to act, said Yatanar Htun.

YouTube deleted one of the videos linked in the emails after it was invited to comment by Reuters and removed a channel for harassment. But another channel used to allege fraud remains on the site.