Created by Antonio Graceffo using AI tools. Logos of Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter/X are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here under fair use for illustrative purposes in a journalistic context.

 

Representative Jim Jordan took to X today to announce that Google has capitulated on its draconian censorship ‘rules’ over the past several years and has vowed to reinstate previously banned accounts on the YouTube platform.

Rep. Jordan wrote, “Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform.”

In follow up posts to X, Rep. Jordan reveals some of the specific details.  For example, YouTube “admits the Biden administration censorship pressure was ‘unacceptable and wrong’” and “confirms that the Biden administration wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies.”

You can read the full letter addressed to Rep. Jordan here.

YouTube states:

“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.  While the Company  continued  to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative  user-generated content.”

“As online platforms…grappled with these decisions, the Administration’s officials, including President Biden, created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms  based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”

“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempt  to dictate how the Company moderates content, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”

YouTube went on to vow that “no matter the political atmosphere” they will “continue to enable free expression on its platform” while claiming they “expanded its approach to educational, documentary, scientific, and artistic content on its platform.”

In doing so, they acknowledge that they “terminated channels for violating its Community Guidelines on election integrity content through 2023 and COVID-19 content through 2024” and  will “provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and election integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”

On his first day in office, President Trump Executive Order 14149, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”  The EO directed all federal agencies to refrain from and correct any past actions involving unconstitutional censorship of Americans while directing the Attorney General to investigate any federal censorship over the past four years.

Recently President Trump and administration officials have raised concerns over Section 230, a provision in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that  shields online platforms from liability based on content created by third party users.  With calls focused on amending this section, social media platforms could potentially face lawsuits over defamation and harmful and/or illegal material posted to their platforms.  This would likely lead to much stricter censorship, rather than freedom of speech.

Perhaps those insinuations were the proverbial ‘shot over the bow’ to reign in a one-sided provision that affords private companies freedom from liability while still allowing them complete control over moderation over free, constitutional speech.

Either way, this is a massive victory for President Trump’s efforts to reign in the censorship regime.



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