Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way

In June 2023, YouTube decided to stop fighting the most persistent strain of election misinformation in the United States: the falsehood that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.

Within months, the largest video platform became a home for election conspiracy theories, half-truths and lies. They in turn became a source of revenue for YouTube, which announced growing quarterly ad sales on Tuesday.

During four tumultuous months of this year’s presidential campaign, researchers from Media Matters for America, a group that monitors information from conservative sources, examined the consequences of YouTube’s about-face.

While Media Matters is a progressive organization that regularly criticizes conservatives, reporters and academics frequently cite it as a source on YouTube misinformation because it devotes significant resources to tracking the vast platform.

The New York Times independently verified the research, examining all of the videos identified by Media Matters and determining whether YouTube placed ads or fact-check labels on them.

From May through August, researchers at Media Matters tracked 30 of the most popular YouTube channels they identified as persistently spreading election misinformation, to analyze the narratives they shared in the run-up to November’s election.

The 30 conservative channels posted 286 videos containing election misinformation, which racked up more than 47 million views. YouTube generated revenue from more than a third of those videos by placing ads before or during them, researchers found. Some commentators also made money from those videos and other monetized features available to members of the YouTube Partner Program.

Commentators included former elected officials, such as Rudolph W. Giuliani, who disputed the results of the 2020 race:

Journalists like Tucker Carlson, who said the last presidential election was stolen:

And popular pundits like Ben Shapiro, who said Democrats “rigged” voting rules in 2020:

Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, posted more false electoral claims to YouTube than any other major commentator in the research group, the analysis concluded. He said in May, for example, that if he did not rehash the 2020 election, the 2024 election would be stolen.

Mr. Carlson and Mr. Shapiro did not directly respond to a series of questions, but attacked reporting from The New York Times. Mr. Giuliani said in an X post that he was “proud to be included with Ben and Tucker — two GREAT Patriots!” He added that “we are particularly honored by the designation as #1 among ‘major YouTube creators.’”

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has prided itself on connecting viewers with “authoritative information” about elections. But in this presidential contest, it acted as a megaphone for conspiracy theories. The commentators used false narratives about 2020 as a foundation for elaborate claims that the 2024 presidential contest was also rigged — all while YouTube made money from them.

Kayla Gogarty, a research director at Media Matters who led the analysis, said that “YouTube is allowing these right-wing accounts and channels to undermine the 2024 results.”

A YouTube spokeswoman said that the company reviewed eight videos, identified by The Times, and that those did not violate its community guidelines.

“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season,” she said in a statement.

“Most” of the 30 tracked channels are “ineligible for advertising,” and some had previously violated the company’s content policies, the spokeswoman added. “This report demonstrates our consistent approach to enforcing our policies.”

YouTube said it removes videos that mislead voters on how to vote, encourage election interference or make violent threats.

Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube’s chief business officer, described the platform’s approach to the election as “cautious and vigilant” in a September interview.

“We have significant investment in this area in terms of making sure that first and foremost we’re raising authoritative content, and then we are removing or reducing things that might represent misinformation,” said Ms. Coe, who was not directly responding to the Media Matters research.

In December 2020, YouTube banned content that “that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” the same policy it applied to historical presidential races.

But in June 2023, the platform reversed course, saying creators were allowed to dispute the outcome of any past presidential race as YouTube tried to offer “a home for open discussion and debate during the ongoing election season.” YouTube declined to comment on whether it would reimpose a ban on misinformation about the outcome of the race after states certified the votes, as it did in 2020.

YouTube removed only three of the videos that Media Matters found and placed information labels that link to factual information on 21 of them, though most of the election labels were later removed.

Some of the commentators seized on news events.

Those moments included Mr. Trump’s conviction on May 30 on 34 felony counts related to hush-money payments. Kash Patel, who served in Mr. Trump’s administration, said in a video posted by NTD, an independent television network, that the justice system was “rigged” against the former president to interfere with the election.

And when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. struggled to remove his name from the Michigan ballot in the days after dropping out of the presidential race on Aug. 23. Mr. Giuliani said that “they’re cheating already in Michigan.”

Mr. Patel did not directly respond to a series of questions, but attacked reporting from The Times in an emailed statement.

YouTube’s approach to the presidential race garnered attention in September when two Russians, working for the state-run media outlet RT, were indicted in connection with an effort to spread disinformation on the video platform.

RT allegedly funneled the money through Tenet Media, which operated a YouTube channel with more than 16 million views. Tenet then paid popular pundits to create content, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, whose channels were monitored by the Media Matters researchers.

Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pool and others have said they had no knowledge about the true source of the payments. YouTube deleted Tenet’s channel but did not terminate Mr. Johnson’s and Mr. Pool’s accounts.

Mr. Johnson said his channel provided “a valuable access point for independent thought and journalism,” and reiterated his stance that the 2020 election was stolen. He attacked reporting from The Times in an online video. Mr. Pool did not respond to a request for comment.

YouTube made money from more of Mr. Johnson’s videos than any other creator’s videos that the researchers tracked, placing ads on 35 of his 39 videos. He shared conspiracy theories that have been debunked, including that Democrats “broke the machines” to deny Republicans a victory in Arizona on election night in 2020.

Political commentators on YouTube used Mr. Trump’s conviction to claim that his legal troubles were a concerted effort to hamper his electoral prospects.

Mike Davis, a former Senate aide who runs a judicial advocacy group called the Article III Project, claimed that Mr. Biden, his allies and his aides were behind Mr. Trump’s conviction. (Mr. Trump was charged by state prosecutors, who are not under the control of the president, and convicted by a jury in New York.)

Mr. Davis said, “Biden is behind the unprecedented indictments of Trump.” He responded to questions from The Times with an attack on The Times’s reporting in a post on X.

There was also a swell of misinformation from the 30 YouTube creators in July when Republicans in the House passed the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship in federal elections. The bill did not become law, but it prompted inaccurate claims on YouTube that undocumented immigrants voted en masse in 2020 and would do the same this fall.

In a Fox News appearance, Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, said Democrats wanted more than 11 million undocumented immigrants to vote.

“The Democrat party has decided that voter fraud is good for them,” he said on July 11 in a monetized video on Fox’s YouTube channel that gained 87,000 views.

A Fox News spokeswoman said it was “alarming to see The New York Times take dictation from deeply partisan left-wing activists at Media Matters in an attempt to censor and smear outlets that showcase a diversity of opinions.” Mr. Cruz’s office did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

In August, Mr. Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Mr. Trump. He struggled to get off the ballot in Michigan, which prompted Mr. Giuliani to spread rapid-fire misinformation.

Mr. Giuliani accused the secretary of state in Michigan, Jocelyn Benson, of illegally keeping Mr. Kennedy on the ballot to help Democrats as part of a broader attempt to “fix the election.” (Michigan law did not permit a candidate like Mr. Kennedy, who had been nominated by the Natural Law Party in Michigan, to withdraw after accepting a party nomination.)

Mr. Giuliani made the claims during a livestream that had more than 3,400 views. YouTube previously suspended him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol for sharing election lies.

Ads appear on only two of Mr. Giuliani’s 77 YouTube videos containing election falsehoods. He continued to dispute the 2020 election in videos that found an audience of 415,000.

“Don’t get angry at me if I tell you they’re already cheating on the 2024 election,” he said in an Aug. 28 video.

Mr. Johnson tapped into the immigration issue on YouTube, where he has 2.5 million subscribers. YouTube placed ads on 35 of his videos containing misinformation, and they attracted seven million views.

Mr. Johnson argued in a monetized video with 157,000 views that Democrats had not “closed the border” because they were planning on making immigrants “30 million new Democrat voters.” (In fact, noncitizens cannot legally vote in elections, and election officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence that noncitizens are trying to vote in meaningful numbers.)

In a video he produced in response to questions from The Times, Mr. Johnson did not directly address whether suggesting that Democrats were trying to get 30 million illegal immigrants to vote was misinformation.

When YouTube last barred creators from uploading misinformation about the presidential election, the platform said it worried the content would mislead users.

Since then, the company’s public stance has shifted. It said banning this type of election misinformation did not reduce real-world harm and has focused instead on its benefits.

“What’s important to us,” Ms. Coe, the YouTube executive, said, “is that we’re representing a broad spectrum of views.”

Additional production by Gray Beltran.