Earlier this week, YouTube removed a video posted on Brazil’s President Jair Blosonaro in 2021 about electronic voting machines.
Since he became president, Bolsonaro has said the electoral process in the country is not transparent and that there was election fraud in the 2014 and 2018 elections. The claims have been disputed by the Superior Electoral Court.
In the video YouTube removed, which was posted in July 2021, the president said that the electronic voting machines were not secure.
The video is still available on another channel on YouTube – on the TV BrasilGov channel run by the federal government.
In a statement to CNN Brasil, YouTube said it has rules that “must be followed by all users.”
“We have worked to keep our policies and systems up to date in order to give visibility to credible content and reduce the spread of misleading information, while allowing political debate to take place,” it added.
YouTube noted that since March, it has removed claims of election fraud in the 2018 election and those about the voting machines getting hacked.
“This is one of the examples of what we don’t allow under our policy against election disinformation,” the platform added.
Bolsonaro repeated the same claims of election fraud in a meeting held this week with ambassadors. YouTube is yet to censor that video.
