This story is part of 2020 elections, CNET's coverage of the November vote preparations.
YouTube said Tuesday it had shut down several videos that streamed fake election results live hours before polls closed anywhere in the country.
The videos streamed the wrong results to thousands of viewers before they were deleted from the world's largest video sharing platform owned by Google. Some of the videos were showing ads, meaning their developers were able to make money off of the content.
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"After careful consideration, we will remove live streams that violate our community guidelines," a YouTube spokesman said in a statement. "We have policies in place that prohibit spam, fraudulent practices and fraud, and we remain vigilant about election-related content in the pre-election and post-election period."
While YouTube has tried to prioritize videos from mainstream news networks, according to the video, some of the videos that streamed the fake results belonged to music channels Screenshots of the streams posted on twitter. Youtube replied to the tweet say it took down the videos.
The screenshots showed that one of the channels called Wicked Sounds has 1.48 million subscribers. The channel administrator did not immediately return a request for comment. At least three of the videos recorded have been monetized, according to the Insider website, which previously covered the news. The videos appeared when users searched the platform for election results, the website said.
The video takedowns come as YouTube and others Technology giants tried to contain misinformation in connection with the US presidential election. Social Valley companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter were eager to prove they could avoid the mistakes they made in 2016 when that choice was marred by interference from Russian agents who took advantage of big tech platforms.
The live streams of the fake results came when YouTube began displaying special information boards under videos about the election on Tuesday, as well as certain search results pages for election-related requests. "The results may not be final," said the panel text. "See the latest information on Google."
In September, YouTube announced that people would be shown mail-in voting bulletin boards when watching videos discussing the topic. The voting method is fraught with misinformation as President Donald Trump attempted to discredit the process without providing evidence of security flaws in the tried and tested system.
