(LifeSiteNews) — YouTube on Friday rolled back its policy banning dissent concerning the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. YouTubers will now be allowed to voice concerns about whether President Joe Biden legitimately won the last presidential contest.
The social media company announced the change in a June 2 blog post that acknowledged the scope of the ban that began in December 2020.
“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube said.
“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the statement continued. “With that in mind, and with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump and many conservatives have raised serious concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 election amid the drastic expansion of mail-in voting justified by then-ongoing COVID controls and the censorship of content that would reflect poorly on Biden.
Trump, who announced his third bid for the White House in November 2022, continues to argue that widespread voter fraud unfairly tilted the election to Biden.
In its June 2 statement, YouTube noted that the “ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society – especially in the midst of election season.”
Axios pointed out that while YouTube said it “carefully deliberated this change,” it “didn’t provide further examples of what factors or instances it considered when weighing its decision.”
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YouTube’s rollback of its election content restrictions comes after the corporation reinstated Trump’s account in March after joining a bevy of other social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, in banning his accounts following the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It also follows Twitter’s transformation into a free speech hub after the major social media platform’s acquisition by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk last year.