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 The platform will offer terminated creators a process to rejoin if they were banned for violating policies that are no longer in effect[2:2].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 ↩︎

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dkEnglish
    41·
    14 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.”