YouTube to Bring Back Banned Creators

Well, there's a new administration running...everything it seems...and that means opening up more social media to those "restricted voices" like RFK and Steve Bannon by letting them back onto YouTube. As reported by Moises Mendez II over at Out, a letter from Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan states that YouTube will make a pathway for the reinstatement of previously banned YouTube channels. Donovan is a lawyer for Alphabet, Google's parent company, and the banned channels mentioned focused on the spreading of misinformation regarding Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.

Reflecting changes to its integrity policies, the letter displays what some may consider to be clear coddling of conservative voices. "Today, YouTube's Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding COVID-19 and election 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if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and election integrity policies that are no longer in effect."

And it continues with an implied quid pro quo. "No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on its platform, particularly as it relates to issues subject to political debate. Political debate and discussion are in the public's interest, which is why YouTube expanded its approach to educational, documentary, scientific, and artistic content on the platform."

Hey, we gave you libtard sciencey arty stuff, let us have our racism and whacky medical nonsense!

Some reactions to the censoring of extremist channels and views on YouTube can be summed up by clean_up_aisle_6 back when the bans were first installed: "fuck that shit. i hate extremism with a passion, especially fascism and theocracy, but we all know this will be abused to censor moderate and reasonable anti establishment political speakers. all speech is free speech, even that from communists, even that from flat earthers, even that from 9/11 truthers, even that from neo-confederates, even that from nazis, even that from monarchists." (sic)

The announcement of the reinstatement program came with a mildly placating caveat: "This will be a limited pilot project that will be available to a subset of creators in addition to those channels terminated for policies that have been deprecated."

"Limited pilot project." Yeah, sure, Jan. Let's just call it a crack in the Hoover Dam that will soon break open and let the flood of hate speech wash over us. But remember, it can only rush over you if you click that link. So how about not clicking that link?

As reported by CNBC, some channels that may apply for reinstatement belonged to Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In the words of Lucille Bluth, "This does not bode well."

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