By Thomas Stevenson – The Postmillennial
Google admitted that the Biden administration pressured the company to censor content on its platforms and has committed that they will reinstate accounts that were terminated from the platform.
In a letter to Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, Google‘s parent company Alphabet stated, “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, including Alphabet, 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,” Google added. “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”
The letter later stated, “The Company terminated channels for repeatedly violating its Community Guidelines on elections integrity content through 2023 and COVID-19 content through 2024. Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding COVID-19 and elections integrity. 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if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”
Some creators immediately jumped at the news, requesting that the content that was taken down by YouTube be reinstated. Tim Pool posted to X, “I have requested that Youtube restore our TimcastIRL episode featuring Alex Jones and Joe Rogan following this news The episode was banned 3 years after airing for incredibly dubious reasons related to ‘medical misinformation.'”
In the aftermath of Covid-19, there were efforts by the Biden administration to pressure big tech companies, including Google and Meta, to censor and take down posts the administration characterized as “misinformation” regarding vaccines and other findings.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, when he appeared on Joe Rogan earlier this year, detailed the pressure that Facebook got from the Biden administration. “They pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly, were true. They basically pushed us in and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down,” he said at the time.