YouTube said it will also bar videos that have been manipulated or doctored to deceive users, including content that “has been technically manipulated to make it appear that a government official is dead.” That rule would have removed videos supporting conspiracy theories such as one that took root last year suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was secretly dead.
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The two sites also diverge on their approach to lies by political figures. Facebook has said it will not remove ads by politicians, even when they contain untruths. YouTube doesn’t permit politicians to blatantly lie in ads, though it does allow for the occasional “political hyperbole” so long as it doesn’t significantly undermine trust in democracy, the company noted in December. Both companies say they will prohibit content that spreads misinformation about the upcoming census or voting processes .
YouTube took a page from Twitter—which banned political ads outright last October—when it announced in December that it would no longer allow campaigns to micro-target voters with political ads. Despite calls from critics, Facebook has yet to do the same.
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