Ahead of the 2024 political cycle, a number of Big Tech platforms are making changes to their misinformation policies concerning COVID-19 vaccines and false election claims. YouTube and Meta in particular are revising their approaches, sparking debates about political speech and the spread of false information.
On June 2, YouTube confirmed a U-turn on its election misinformation approach. In a blog post, the platform announced it would stop removing content that “advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.”
YouTube stated that leaving their old policy in place may have the “unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”
The company’s former policy was implemented in 2020 following Donald Trump’s election loss.
Meanwhile Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also adopting a new approach. The company announced it has reinstated the Instagram account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, who was banned in 2021 over his anti-vax content.
Meta’s spokesperson said that it reinstated the account because “he is now an active candidate for president of the United States.”
It is unclear if Meta intends to relax its misinformation policies for other high-profile figures.
Twitter has also experienced its own recent changes. Despite evidence of content censorship at the behest of foreign governments, Elon Musk’s promised “free speech”-first policies have had a significant impact.
The company said it would no longer enforce its COVID misinformation policy last November, restored the accounts of prominent election deniers in January and rolled back its policies against misgendering people in April, as reported by Axios.
Opponents argue these changes may amplify false rhetoric, while free speech activists favor more speech and fact-checking.
As social media companies navigate misinformation and free expression, the landscape continues to shift, with possible implications for the 2024 elections.
