It's not exactly hard to find politically conservative content on YouTube, but the platform may soon skew even further to the right. YouTube parent Alphabet has confirmed that it will restore channels that were banned in recent years for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and elections. Alphabet says it values free expression and political debate, placing the blame for its previous moderation decisions on the Biden administration.
Alphabet made this announcement via a lengthy letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The letter, a response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, explains in no uncertain terms that the company is taking a more relaxed approach to moderating political content on YouTube.
For starters, Alphabet denies that its products and services are biased toward specific viewpoints and that it "appreciates the accountability" provided by the committee. The cloying missive goes on to explain that Google didn't really want to ban all those accounts, but Biden administration officials just kept asking. Now that the political tables have turned, Google is looking to dig itself out of this hole.
According to Alphabet's version of events, misinformation such as telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID wasn't initially against its policies. However, Biden officials repeatedly asked YouTube to take action. YouTube banned COVID misinformation through 2024, one year longer than the crackdown on election conspiracy theories. Alphabet says that today, YouTube's rules permit a "wider range of content."
In an apparent attempt to smooth things over with the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, YouTube will restore the channels banned for COVID and election misinformation. This includes prominent conservatives like Dan Bongino, who is now the Deputy Director of the FBI, and White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka.
Light-touch moderation
The turn away from stricter moderation is not exclusive to YouTube. Facebook has also pulled the plug on its fact-checking system, which was introduced after the 2016 election. Instead, Facebook uses an X-like community notes feature now. Conservative voices have praised this approach to non-moderation of content as more transparent and less prone to censorship, in spite of how easy it is to manipulate. Google says it's opposed to empowering fact-checkers to take action or label content as misleading. However, it is testing a community notes feature in the US that could expand at a later date.
Alphabet hasn't confirmed how and when it will restore the affected accounts, saying only that banned users will have an "opportunity" to return. Many of the creators who were kicked off YouTube for violating misinformation policies have gone on to build followings on other platforms. So it's unclear whether all of them would want to come back, and others are busy complaining that running the FBI is a lot of work.
Google closes its correspondence by reminding Jordan of all the regulatory hurdles it faces in Europe, specifically calling out the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. The company claims these laws could lead to the restriction of free speech. Trump's administration has shown interest in fighting back against European tech regulation, and Google is a prime target of such policies. Alphabet doesn't ask for anything in particular here, but it's telling that Google reminds Jordan of its concerns about Europe right after giving him everything he wanted.
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