YouTube has disclosed the company’s four new focus areas ahead of the 2024 presidential election. To many, these guidelines look like a policy of further censorship on the video-sharing platform.
As reported by Reclaim The Net on Thursday, YouTube has released a new video on its blog discussing its four new areas of focus with its new chief product officer, Johanna Voolich.
During the interview, published on Wednesday, Voolich noted that “responsibility” is one of the three areas she focuses on when developing products. She said, “We want to do this in a way to make sure that YouTube is a responsible actor in society.”
Voolich’s remarks raise some serious questions about what the policy creators and moderators at YouTube believe being a responsible actor would look like, particularly in the lead-up to a presidential election. YouTube has defined what the term means for its policies in the past, Reclaim The Net reported.
According to a blog published on Sept. 3, 2019, YouTube has 4R’s of responsibility:
“1. Remove content that violates our policy as quickly as possible.
2. Raise up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information.
3. Reward trusted, eligible creators and artists.
4. Reduce the spread of content that brushes right up against our policy line.”
To some, this signals that YouTube’s policies advocate for censorship and that suppression of alternate views on the platform will likely continue or even escalate in this election year.
Vice President of Free Speech America Dan Schneider believes this to be the case.
“The closer we get to the November elections, the more censorship and propagandizing we are going to see out of YouTube and Google,” Schneider commented. “We’ve predicted it, we know it, and we’re gonna see more of it.”
YouTube’s parent company Google has also come under fire over the issue of censorship and election interference. A March 18 report by the MRC Free Speech America revealed 41 instances of Google using its gigantic influence and algorithms to influence elections to boost its preferred candidates and suppress unfavorable candidates.
Relating to the 2024 election, Google was caught burying the campaign websites of former President Donald Trump and former Democrat candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. (now running as an Independent) and many others while prominently displaying the campaign websites of President Joe Biden and Democrat presidential primary candidate Marianne Williamson.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.