Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on education as he holds a campaign rally with supporters, in Davenport, Iowa, U.S. March 13, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Google-owned YouTube will allow former President Donald Trump’s account to post recent videos as of Friday, lifting restrictions put in place following the Jan. 6 rebel on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
The choice implies that Trump’s accounts on three major platforms from which he was suspended or restricted are actually restored, in time for his expected campaign for the 2024 election. Facebook owner Meta and Twitter had each earlier decided to reinstate Trump’s accounts, after suspending them for fear he would incite further violence.
In 2021, then-YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said Trump’s restrictions can be lifted when it believed the danger of real-world violence had subsided. The account was not terminated from the location, however it couldn’t upload recent videos under the restrictions.
“We rigorously evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the chance for voters to listen to equally from major national candidates within the run as much as an election,” YouTube’s Vice President of Public Policy Leslie Miller said in an announcement. “This channel will proceed to be subject to our policies, just like all other channel on YouTube.”
YouTube said its trust and safety teams analyzed aspects reminiscent of government security alerts and violent rhetoric across different platforms to find out when the danger of real-world violence had decreased. The corporate also noted that Trump’s posts on YouTube are inclined to differ from those on other platforms, often including reuploads from news networks.
As of Friday, Trump’s YouTube account has greater than 2.6 million subscribers.
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