YouTube will stop removing videos with false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, the social media platform announced on Friday.

The move, ahead of the 2024 elections, is a reversal of its policy put in place after the 2020 vote.

The company said it has deleted tens of thousands of videos questioning the integrity of past elections, but now "it was time to re-evaluate".

The policy goes into effect from 2 June.

YouTube and other social media platforms have faced intense pressure since the 2016 elections to safeguard against political misinformation.

The Google-owned platform says the new policy is being put into place because of today's changed landscape.

"In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm," the company said in a statement.