It’ll also reinstate accounts banned for spreading misinformation.
Google, like Meta before it, has made what appears to be a strategic decision to bend the knee to the Trump administration and Republican leadership. In a letter addressed to the US House Judiciary Committee and released by Chairman Jim Jordan, the company claimed that the Biden administration attempted to pressure it to remove content that didn’t explicitly violate its content policies. To rectify the situation, the company committed to allowing users who had their YouTube accounts terminated over things like COVID-19 misinformation and denial of the results of the 2020 presidential election a path to return to the platform.
In the letter—which was signed by Dan Donovan, an attorney representing Google and YouTube parent company Alphabet—the company claimed that, during the coronavirus pandemic, the company experienced the Biden administration breathing down its neck. It claimed 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 also called any attempts by the government to influence content moderation policy “unacceptable and wrong.” (For whatever it’s worth, platforms like YouTube started cracking down on misinformation around covid-19 before Biden took office.)
Gizmodo reached out to Google for comment about its communication with the Trump administration and content moderation, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
