YouTube accounts livestream fake election results to thousands

Several YouTube accounts livestreamed fake U.S. election results to tens of thousands of viewers hours before any of the polls closed — and before YouTube took the clips down as spam.

Starting Tuesday morning, multiple channels posted similar, lengthy live videos on the Google-owned site. Each showed a mock presidential election map filled in with theoretical results. These broadcasts appeared at the top of the YouTube page for the search term “election results” and were watched by thousands of online viewers. Some of the clips ran advertisements.

“After careful review, we are removing livestreams that violate our Community Guidelines,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in an email. “We have established policies prohibiting spam, deceptive practices & scams, and we continue to be vigilant with regards to election-related content in the lead-up and post-election period.”