YouTube: No ‘deepfakes’ or ‘birther’ videos in 2020 election

YouTube: No ‘deepfakes’ or ‘birther’ videos in 2020 election

SFGate

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Better late than never, YouTube is making it clear there will be no “birtherism” on its service during this year’s U.S. presidential election. Never mind that the conspiracy theory around former President Barack Obama’s citizenship emerged in 2008 and has not been a widespread issue since he last ran for president in 2012.

The Google-owned video service is also reiterating that it won’t allow election-related “deepfake” videos and anything that aims to mislead viewers about voting procedures and how to participate in the 2020 census.

Neither of these policies is new, either, but YouTube clarified its rules Monday in an apparent attempt to ensure that it is working to prevent the spread of election-related misinformation on its service. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other technology platforms are under intense pressure to prevent interference in the 2020 elections after they were manipulated in 2016 by Russia-connected actors.

The San Bruno company is mostly reiterating content guidelines that it has been putting in place since the 2016 election.

Its ban on technically manipulated videos of political figures was made apparent last year when YouTube became the first major service to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the announcement Monday further clarifies that it will take down any election-related videos that are technically altered to mislead people in a way that goes beyond simply taking clips of speech out of context. The company also said it would remove doctored videos that could cause “serious risk of egregious harm” — such as to make it appear that a government official is dead.

Facebook, which last year had resisted early calls to yank the Pelosi video, said in January that it was banning “deepfake” videos, the false but realistic clips created with...

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