YouTube will start adding context to videos that make mail-in voting claims

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With the presidential election less than two months away, online platforms have been working overtime to combat false claims regarding the election. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have all set out new and update policies and now YouTube is adding a new feature to the video-sharing platform that looks to provide context and facts regarding a hotly contested subject – mail-in voting.

Announced this week, YouTube states that it will start using its information panels (which first made an appearance in 2018) to start pointing to factual information regarding mail-in voting. YouTube states, “This means that under videos that discuss voting by mail, you’ll see an information panel directing you to authoritative information from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a bipartisan think tank.”

In addition to this new information panels, searches on YouTube regarding presidential candidates will include a card that shows more information about the candidate. This is also expanded to congressional candidates.

Finally, like basically every online platform, YouTube will start providing prompts related to voter registration, like how and when to vote.

While these updates are nice, I have to wonder if any of them are truly effective. If you are still undecided about who you are voting for, I seriously doubt some random information on YouTube is going to be the catalyst that makes up your mind, or changes your already-established opinion.

What do you think? How do you feel about all these tech companies pushing out similar policies? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Your costly YouTube TV subscription is seeing another price hike
• Facebook really, really wants people to use its new Voter Information Center
• Bots are copy/pasting on Twitter with reckless abandon, but hopefully not for much longer
• It looks like TikTok will not be banned in the US

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.