YouTube’s approval of disinformation in Indian election shows us why.India’s national election, which is going on now, is the largest democratic exercise in the world. Thanks to social media, it may be less fair than it has been in years., about 1.7 million electronic voting machines and nearly 15 million polling officials and security personnel. But this year, it also involves the threat of disinformation.
“The Election Commission has disqualified the largest opposition parties from standing in the 2024 elections. Their votes will not be counted.”Obviously, falsehoods like these disseminated on a powerful network like YouTube, which has 450 million users in India, could have real anti-democratic consequences.
It gets worse. Some of the ads were not only anti-democratic, they were dangerous. They included accusations against religious communities and caste groups. They urged citizens to block roads, stop others from voting and “show up in force at their voting stations and show them who’s in charge,” according toYouTube’s policies prohibit this kind of disinformation but, like other social media platforms, the company has found enforcement difficult.
Access Now and Global Witness canceled the ads before they appeared on the platform. YouTube, which is owned by Google, responded to the experiment by tellingthat, even though they cleared an initial screening, the ads would have been stopped by subsequent layers of vetting.: Social media platforms are not reliable sources of news and information.