Users all over the world come to YouTube for news and information about elections – from finding reliable information about voting, candidates and election results to being able to access major election-related live moments – such as debates and election event coverage.
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Elections
We are committed to connecting people to reliable elections content and ensuring that major election-related live moments remain easily accessible to a wide audience on our platform.
Given the global nature of our platform, our elections policies and systems are developed and implemented with a global view: our Community Guidelines are enforced across languages and locales, and our systems connect voters across all of the countries we operate in to high-quality news and information about the elections that are most relevant to them.
When users search for or watch elections content on YouTube, our recommendation system prominently surfaces high-quality content in search results, the homepage and the 'watch next' panel. That way, voters are connected to high-quality content from a variety of news sources. In addition, to expand access to election-related live content, live streams of major election-related live moments – such as debates and election event coverage – may show on your homepage or at the top of your search results when you search for videos related to select national elections live moments.
Beyond our always-on product features, we may launch additional efforts to raise information during key civics and elections moments. Here's what that may look like in-product during an election cycle:
Candidate information panels may show at the top of your search results when you search for the names of eligible candidates. These panels highlight info on the candidates, such as their political party and what office they're running for. For some elections, information panels may also surface when you search for eligible political parties.
Voting information panels may show at the top of your search results when you search for info on how to vote. To help you learn more about specific voting info, these panels will refer you to voting information in Google Search that's gathered from vetted, non-partisan, third-party sources, or link you directly to those sources.
Election results information panels may show at the top of your search results when you search for videos related to select national elections. These panels may also show under videos that discuss selected national elections. The information panels may link out to non-partisan, third-party sources.
We prohibit content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means or eligibility requirements for voting, or false claims that could materially discourage voting.
Content that's intended to impersonate a person or channel, such as a political candidate or their political party, isn't allowed.
We prohibit content that advances false claims related to the technical eligibility requirements for current political candidates and sitting elected government officials to serve in office. Eligibility requirements considered are based on applicable national law and include age, citizenship or vital status.
Content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes is not allowed on YouTube. This includes obstructing or interrupting voting procedures.
Content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users (usually beyond clips taken out of context) and that may pose a serious risk of egregious harm is not allowed on YouTube.
We also acknowledge that content focused on elections requires careful balancing, ensuring that we allow for robust political debate, so sometimes content that might otherwise violate our policies may remain on YouTube if it contains Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic (EDSA) context.
In some cases, we may make EDSA exceptions based on public interest. This could include, for example, content like national political candidates on the campaign trail.
As AI becomes more sophisticated, it may be challenging for viewers to distinguish between real and synthetic content.
We use labels to clearly indicate altered or synthetic election content. For elections, this label is displayed in both the video player and description, and is then surfaced regardless of the creator, political viewpoints or language.
We work to remove content that violates our policies as early as possible by staying ahead of emerging threats and issues before they reach or become widespread on our platform. Our Intelligence Desk monitors and detects new content trends, to include inappropriate content and problematic behaviours.
YouTube Trust & Safety and Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) work together to identify coordinated influence operations on YouTube and terminate their channels and accounts — including government-backed hacking looking to interfere in electoral processes. Through TAG, we share intelligence, best practices and threat information with law enforcement and industry partners.
Our Community Guidelines, advertiser-friendly content guidelines and Google Ads policies work together to ensure a safe, positive experience for our users, creators and advertisers and govern the content that is shown in advertisements across Google — which includes YouTube.
