Google acknowledged before the United States House Judiciary Committee that it censored right-wing political content related to the COVID-19 pandemic, even when such material did not violate YouTube's policies, by direct order of the Democratic administration of former president Joe Biden.
Despite having complied with the orders, the company described these actions as "unacceptable and wrong" and announced that it will allow the return of thousands of deleted channels to the platform under those authoritarian guidelines.
This confession was recorded in a letter sent last September 23 to the Committee chairman, Republican Jim Jordan, as part of an investigation that has lasted more than a year into YouTube's content moderation practices.
According to the document, senior officials in the Biden administration, including the president himself, maintained "repeated and sustained" contact with Google to request the censorship of posts that did not violate the platform's rules.
"It is unacceptable and wrong for any government, including the Biden Administration, to attempt to dictate how the company moderates content," stated the communication sent by Alphabet's lawyers, Google's and YouTube's parent company.
The document adds that, according to them, although Google tried to maintain "autonomy" in its decisions, the political climate driven by the White House influenced the assessment of what material could be published online during the pandemic and in the electoral context.
