Google admits to censorship pushed by Biden administration and invites back banned users

Those who saw their YouTube videos and other content banned during COVID-19 and the 2020 election were invited back to the platform Tuesday in an astonishing mea culpa from the company that blamed their censorship on Biden administration pressure tactics.

Alphabet Inc., the company that operates Google and YouTube, wrote in a letter Tuesday to Congress that they were forced into removing content by Mr. Biden and his senior aides.

“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden administration, attempts to dictate how the company moderates content,” Alphabet’s lawyers wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. “And the company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”

Company officials acknowledged they had gone too far in banning content related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election results.

Their censorship came mostly in response to senior Biden administration officials who repeatedly pressured them to take down content even though the material did not violate the company’s policies.

Company officials said Biden administration aides and President Biden “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”

Google also admitted to relying on “health authorities” when it initiated policies, kept in place through 2024, that banned certain discussions of COVID-19 policies and various treatments for the virus.

Those actions, Alphabet officials said in a letter to Mr. Jordan from their law firm, were “well-intentioned,” but they added, “The Company recognizes it should never come at the expense of public debate on these important issues.”

Alphabet’s admission followed Mr. Jordan’s yearlong investigation into online censorship practices that appeared to target conservative viewpoints.

The Ohio Republican issued a round of subpoenas seeking information from social media giants regarding their censorship of right-leaning voices.

YouTube started banning users shortly after the contentious 2020 presidential election.

In December of 2020, YouTube announced it had “terminated” more than 8,000 channels and thousands of “harmful and misleading” videos related to the 2020 election, including content that alleged “widespread fraud or errors” had skewed the election results.

Company officials said in the same announcement that third-party “fact check information panels” were “triggered” more than 200,000 times on election-related content related to voting machine integrity and state recounts.

Google was accused of demonetizing conservative media publisher The Federalist in 2020, along with the conservative website ZeroHedge, among others.

“Google owes us all damages for what their censorship cost us,” Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said Tuesday. “A quick ‘we’re sorry’ now that they’re in trouble isn’t going to cut it. Their censorship cost us millions.”

Content bans snared prominent users, among them Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican.

In August 2021, YouTube suspended Mr. Paul for a week after he appeared in a video discussing two peer-reviewed studies that found cloth masks do not prevent the spread of viruses. The company had instituted a “three strikes” policy against users who repeatedly posted prohibited content. Mr. Paul, who pushed back against COVID-19 policies, was on his second strike, resulting in the weeklong ban.

In June 2023, YouTube removed a video of popular podcast host Jordan Peterson interviewing Mr. Kennedy, who was then a presidential candidate. YouTube representatives said at the time that they removed the video “for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”

Mr. Bongino was permanently banned from YouTube in January 2022 after posting two videos that cast doubt on mask-wearing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Alphabet officials said in the letter to Mr. Jordan that they’ll offer those banned from YouTube due to COVID-19 or election-related content “an opportunity … to rejoin the platform.”

The Biden administration has been under intense criticism over its tactics to pressure social media platforms to remove content. In addition to Alphabet, Biden aides bore down on Facebook and Twitter, now X, to force the companies to censor social media posts related to the election and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to emails uncovered by Mr. Jordan.

The effort began almost as soon as Mr. Biden entered the White House with a Jan. 23, 2021, email from Clarke Humphrey, then the digital director for the administration’s COVID-19 response team.

Mr. Humphrey emailed Twitter officials at 1 a.m. on Mr. Biden’s third day in office and asked them to remove a tweet posted a day earlier by Mr. Kennedy that suggested the death of Hank Aaron, 86, may have been tied to the coronavirus vaccine.

Aides threatened the social media giants with unspecified “options” if the platforms did not comply with their censorship demands.

In a now-dismissed lawsuit filed by two states against the Biden administration, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty called their actions “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.