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 partisan 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 channel they identified as persistently spreading election misinformation, to analyze the narratives they shared in the run-up to November’s election.