YouTube relaxation of election misinfo policy draws Democrats’ ire

When YouTube, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc. (owners of Google), relaxed their policy on election misinformation, they drew a firestorm of criticism from four ranking and semi-ranking Democrats in the House of Representatives.

YouTube draws the enmity of the state

Dan Frieth, of Reclaim the Net, offered a summary of events since Thursday, June 22, 2023. He also copied a letter that four Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee sent to YouTube and Alphabet’s CEOs.

That letter took an authoritarian tone toward YouTube and “strongly urge[d]” YouTube “to reconsider” its relaxed-moderation decision. It spoke of “real-world harm” to Officers of Election, Capitol Police, and Vice-President Pence. To substantiate this, the authors cited multiple legacy media articles, providing titles and dates, but no links. Those articles, and statements from left-wing think tanks, denounced as “false” any claims that the Election of 2020 did not achieve the result for which a majority of real, living people actually voted. (YouTube rescinded its policy against questioning any Presidential election on June 2, and announced that fact.)

Then the solons gave YouTube a deadline of July 6, 2023, to make a series of showings:

1. How does allowing content questioning the 2020 election not violate policies against re-posting of previously removed content, or the general election misinformation policies that remain in force and effect? Those policies include sending people to the wrong place to vote and other such dishonest practices.
2. How will YouTube “fact-check, label, provide context around, or reduce the spread of such content”? To justify this, the letter spoke of “multiple court decisions and studies” supporting their position that the election was fair. (It gave no specifics.)
3. What policies will YouTube have in place for the 2024 election?

The real issue

That last would appear to be the real issue. The Democrats won the day with what many still suspect was a comprehensive cheat. Now perhaps they fear exposure of the cheat in real time or ahead of time.

More broadly, these solons want YouTube to resume its role as a State actor – if YouTube ever stopped playing it. CNAV has been over this before, in the context of The Daily Wire and their complaint against YouTube. In point of fact, CNAV’s video channel, Declarations of Truth, is still under warning from that platform for its review of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, 2000 Mules, describing one of many ways the Democratic Party and their allies (masters?) could have and very likely did cheat on the Election of 2020. Today, Declarations of Truth uploads to Rumble, and uses YouTube only during temporary technical emergencies at Rumble. (One such emergency prevented Rumble uploads between 9:45 p.m. EDT Sunday June 25 to 7:45 a.m. EDT today. This emergency did not affect livestreams, however.)

The signatories of the letter were Representatives:

• Frank J. Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Commerce,
• Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce,
• Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, and
• Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

That last signature might be a subtle threat against YouTube that the four proposed to call YouTube and/or Alphabet executives to testify from the green table.