Google reinstates banned YouTube accounts in surprising victory

Google is promising to offer YouTube accounts censored over political speech the ability to be reinstated.

Tech giant Google, which owns the video-based platform, not only vowed to right past wrongs, but also admitted that it received pressure from former President Joe Biden’s administration to throttle accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The surprising shift was detailed in a letter provided to the House Judiciary Committee by a company lawyer, which was later obtained by Fox News Digital.

Alphabet to House Judiciary Committee by American Wire

“Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” reads the letter.

This effectively means that creators of all sizes, from small accounts to larger, more prominent names like Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, all have the opportunity to have their accounts restored, despite being permanently banned for violations. Many account owners have already made the switch to platforms like Rumble, which promises less censorship and more creator freedom to begin conversations of their choice, even ones the founders may not agree with.

The letter also provided information on the Biden administration’s influence over Big Tech platforms like YouTube.

“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” it explained.

However, the lawyer made clear that the censorship that Google engaged in was not at the behest of the previous administration, but was based on independent policies and terms of service that have now been rolled back.

“Google’s revelations came in response to a yearslong Republican-led investigation by the committee into big tech companies, including Google, that censored and suppressed content on their platforms related to COVID-19, the 2020 election and Hunter Biden,” Fox News reported.

Other Big Tech groups like Facebook-parent Meta have also come around to a more neutral angle after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, which exposes just how deep the former administration was into censoring views they didn’t approve of on the social media platforms.

“Meta revealed at the time that it was doing away with third-party fact-checkers, a move then-President Joe Biden called ‘really shameful.’ YouTube has not used outside fact-checkers and vowed that it ‘will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content’ on the platform,” the Fox article added.

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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