Google Reveals Biden-Era Censorship Policies

According to Rokna, citing Interesting Engineering, Google stated that the Biden administration exerted pressure on the company to remove content related to COVID-19 and the U.S. presidential election.

This policy shift comes after years of controversy over how political content has been moderated on the widely used platform.

The announcement, presented in a document to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, affects both ordinary users and prominent figures, including Dan Bongino, former Deputy FBI Director, Sebastian Gorka, former White House Counterterrorism Chief, and Steve Bannon, host of the War Room podcast in the U.S., all of whom had previously made high-profile political statements.

These individuals had been permanently removed from YouTube in past years due to commentary regarding COVID-19 or dissemination of information related to the U.S. presidential election that was deemed false.

One of Google’s attorneys stated: “YouTube provides an opportunity for all content creators to rejoin the platform if their channels were removed for repeated violations of our COVID-19 or previous presidential election policies, which are no longer in effect.”

YouTube also noted that senior officials in the Biden administration had pressured Google to remove content that did not violate the platform’s policies.

According to Google’s lawyer, the U.S. government created a political environment and sought to influence platform actions based on its concerns about misinformation.

The attorney added that senior officials in the Biden administration, including White House representatives, maintained frequent and ongoing contact with Alphabet, Google’s parent company, applying pressure regarding certain user-generated content related to COVID-19 that did not violate company policies. Google had previously described such pressure as unacceptable and inappropriate.