YouTube, the popular video-sharing platform owned by Alphabet, announced a significant policy shift regarding its treatment of channels removed for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and election-related issues. In the past, YouTube had a default policy of making these violations permanent, causing thousands of channels to be deleted. In a recent letter addressed to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan revealed that the platform will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement.
This decision follows the recent burgeoning, relentless pressure from Republican state legislators and Republican senior leadership officials in the Biden administration. During the pandemic, YouTube came under widespread criticism for its content moderation practices. The platform responded by deleting videos that uploaded misinformation about currently approved vaccines. It rolled out initiatives to tag context on selected videos, but it decided against using fact-checkers to do so. In 2017, Google released a fact-checking feature to help combat misinformation. This tool revealed sponsored labels on search results and news articles, and it is just one facet of Google’s monopoly over YouTube.
The policy shift appears motivated by mounting political pressure on tech companies. Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies are under fire for their content moderation practices. Since then, starting in March, Rep. Jim Jordan has gone for the jugular. He alleged that YouTube was acting as a tool of a supposed “federal government’s censorship regime.” Not surprisingly, this claim led Donovan to counter that the pressure being brought to bear upon YouTube was “intolerable and inappropriate.”
The new reinstatement process signifies a potential shift in how YouTube navigates its role in moderating content while balancing political demands. The platform understands the shortcomings of enforcing content moderation policies. These challenges are a result of this prevalent, ever-shifting societal narrative and political discourse.