YouTube will create a process to reinstate the accounts of content creators whose profiles were banned in recent years because they violated rules that limited misinformation about Covid-19 and the 2020 election.
The streaming platform revealed its plans to restore creators’ accounts on Tuesday in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. The change comes as YouTube has started relaxing its content moderation rules, increasing the threshold for offending content and modifying rules on Covid misinformation.
The letter was submitted by Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, in response to a lengthy investigation by Republicans into whether tech companies restricted speech on their platforms at the behest of the Biden administration. It was part of a broader attack by Republicans, which also included a lawsuit against the Biden administration for chilling speech online.
In the letter, Alphabet said that the streaming platform had faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove content that didn’t violate its policies. It said that such government pressure to police speech was “unacceptable and wrong” and that the company “has consistently fought against those efforts on free speech grounds.”
“The company has a commitment to freedom of expression,” said Daniel Donovan, a lawyer from King & Spaulding who wrote the letter for Alphabet. “This commitment is unwavering and will not bend to political pressure.”
The Google spokesman Jose Castaneda referred to the letter and declined to comment. The letter was earlier reported by Fox News.
YouTube, which has more than two billion users worldwide, said in its letter that it “values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.”
YouTube acknowledged government pressure to police speech at a time when Democrats and some Republicans have accused the Trump administration of pressuring media companies to curb speech on television. The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr last week threatened ABC because of remarks the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. ABC suspended Mr. Kimmel’s show hours later.
ABC said “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return to its airwaves on Tuesday.
Tripp Mickle reports on some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Nvidia, Google and Apple. He also writes about trends across the tech industry like layoffs and artificial intelligence.
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