Alphabet's Letter to the House Judiciary Committee [pdf]

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

ImJamal

17 points

11 comments

judiciary.house.govOtherstory

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CensorshipGovernment InfluenceSocial Media Regulation

Key topics

Censorship

Government Influence

Social Media Regulation

Alphabet's letter to the House Judiciary Committee reveals alleged pressure from the Biden Administration to censor certain user-generated content related to COVID-19, sparking controversy over government influence on social media platforms.

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Discussion (11 comments)

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db48x

4 months ago

3 replies

    8.  Senion Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted
        repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain
        user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.
        While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden
        Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative
        user-generated content.
    …
    10. It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration,
        attempts to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding
        misinformation.
    …
    23. The Company terminated channels for repeatedly violating its Community Guidelines on
        elections integrity content through 2023 and COVID-19 content through 2024. Today,
        YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding
        COVID-19 and elections integrity. Reflecting the Community’s commitment to free
        expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if
        the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and
        elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.

They’re finally acknowledging that they allowed Biden to censor Americans by calling their viewpoints “misinformation”. Viewpoints that later became widely accepted as truth, or as likely to be true.

Fun times. How do we prevent it from happening again?

HankStallone

4 months ago

1 reply

Odd that they're admitting this now, and pretending that they weren't happy to do it at the time.

db48x

4 months ago

1 reply

I don’t think it odd that they are mealy-mouthed about it. They’ve clearly gone through with a thesaurus and picked the least offensive adjectives possible.

HankStallone

4 months ago

1 reply

True, only the first part is odd.

But is anyone going to believe the Biden administration had to strong-arm them into censoring dissenting opinions about Covid? They did it because they were goodthinkers, and all goodthinkers at the time agreed that those opinions were dangerous and should be blocked from the public ear. No one had to make them do it.

I get the feeling a lot of people/companies are going to use Biden as a scapegoat for things they all agreed needed doing.

db48x

4 months ago

Oh, yea, I completely agree. Someone from the White House called them up and told them to silence certain ideas, and they said “Ok!”. No push-back at all.

miltonlost

4 months ago

1 reply

> Viewpoints that later became widely accepted as truth, or as likely to be true.

But they're not true! Why are you celebrating allowing people do misinform and lie?

This is so clearly an attempt by Google to kiss the ring of the Trump administration when Trump et all are the ones who have been clearly censoring and attempting censoring.

db48x

4 months ago

How do you know that they are false? Do you have information that the rest of us don’t have?

erentz

4 months ago

2 replies

> They’re finally acknowledging that they allowed Biden to censor Americans by calling their viewpoints “misinformation”.

No they aren’t. Your own quotes say they terminated for their own policies. Not because of pressure by the government. They say if anything they resisted pressure.

Like with Facebooks post Trump 2.0 turnabout. It would be interesting to see the actual emails or letters from the officials showing what this pressure supposedly was and about what cases. This is just another big tech company giving Jim Jordan another letter he wanted.

mc32

4 months ago

Why does the gov have to point out violations to the service provider’s terms?

Are we certain the gov sought and pointed out all violators of terms or only the ones the gov didn’t like?

Like, I’m sure Reddit users by the millions violated that platforms terms… did millions get the boot?

db48x

4 months ago

Well, they didn’t come right out and say that they modified their policy on COVID-19 “misinformation” as a result of pressure from the White House, but we all know that they did. They started banning anyone who talked about how COVID-19 might have originated in a lab, or how that lab might have been doing Gain of Function research on coronaviruses. Now that most people think that a lab origin is likely they have changed their policies and are inviting people back. They never should have banned those people for expressing their opinions in the first place.

Polizeiposaune

4 months ago

also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352258 ("Google Admits Censorship Pressure from Biden Admin, Pledges to Reinstate Accts")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352213 ("YouTube Will Let Users Booted for Violations of COVID, Elections Policies Rejoin")

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ID: 45351738Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 4:38:28 PM

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