Alphabet blames the Biden administration for its moderation decisions.

YouTube announced it will restore thousands of channels that were previously banned for violating its COVID-19 and election integrity policies[1]. This decision came in a 28-page letter from Alphabet to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on September 23, 2025[2].

The company acknowledged that Biden administration officials had pressured YouTube to remove content “that did not violate its policies,” which Alphabet called “unacceptable and wrong”[1:1][2:1]. YouTube’s current guidelines now permit a “wider range of content” regarding COVID-19 and elections[1:2].

Notable figures who could return include Dan Bongino (now FBI Deputy Director), White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka, and others who were banned for discussing COVID-19 or election claims[3]. The platform will offer terminated creators a process to rejoin if they were banned for violating policies that are no longer in effect[2:2].

As part of this change, YouTube will also ban the use of official fact-checkers on its platform, instead launching a feature similar to X’s “Community Notes” that allows users to provide context on videos[2:3].

  1. Ars Technica - YouTube will restore channels banned for COVID and election misinformation ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Deseret News - YouTube restores accounts that were censored over COVID-19 and 2020 election claims ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Washington Examiner - YouTube content creators no longer banned over political speech ↩︎

  • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    241·
    12 hours ago

    I’m having a hard time believing that the Biden administration was some tyrannical anti-free speech censorship regime (can you imagine?). I remember the White House wanting a meeting with the social media platform owners at the time to discuss concerns of COVID misinformation that was literally killing people, and they didn’t say anything about being forced to until Trump won the election. This stinks of shitty lip service to the current administration.

      • StewNasty@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        91·
        11 hours ago

        Of course they are. They see which way the wind is blowing and are following it to the money. Simple as.

      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish
        16·
        11 hours ago

        The large platforms are now the official propaganda arm of fascism.

        You say this while the large platforms have all been found to have been the official propaganda arm of the democrats, which is a staple of actual fascism, while now the current administration is making them stop being propaganda arms of the democrats.

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish
      18·
      11 hours ago

      I’m having a hard time believing that the Biden administration was some tyrannical anti-free speech censorship regime

      Are you serious? Like…legit serious? Were you not paying attention?

      I remember the White House wanting a meeting with the social media platform owners at the time to discuss concerns of COVID misinformation that was literally killing people

      You do realize that you’re just repeating the lies that the government used to force companies like meta to censor people unfairly, don’t you?

  • Lodespawn@aussie.zoneEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    Didn’t Dan Bongino quit the FBI? And if he stuck his balls in a wood chipper and stayed, is the deputy director of the FBI allowed to run a podcast? Surely that’s some kind of gaping security anus?

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dkEnglish
    41·
    12 hours ago

    “All right ladies and gentlemen: This is deadly serious. I need you all to make suggestions for how we can make YouTube even worse. I know we’ve already picked the low hanging fruit. Our desktop experience is poorer than it’s ever been, user comments are horrendous, and you’ve all done great and terrible work, but… Now I need the really disastrous options so we can more smoothly become an integral part of the fascist machine of our new glorious owners.”