YouTube Quietly Loosens Content Moderation Rules

The New York Times reports:

For years, YouTube has removed videos with derogatory slurs, misinformation about Covid vaccines and election falsehoods, saying the content violated the platform’s rules. But since President Trump’s return to the White House, YouTube has encouraged its content moderators to leave up videos with content that may break the platform’s rules rather than remove them, as long as the videos are considered to be in the public interest. Those would include discussions of political, social and cultural issues.

The policy shift, which hasn’t been publicly disclosed, made YouTube the latest social media platform to back off efforts to police online speech in the wake of Republican pressure to stop moderating content. Critics say the changes by social media platforms have contributed to the rapid spread of false assertions and have the potential to increase digital hate speech.

Last year on X, a post inaccurately said, “Welfare offices in 49 states are handing out voter registration applications to illegal aliens.” The post, which would have been removed before recent policy changes, was seen 74.8 million times.

Read the full article.

YouTube once removed videos with “derogatory slurs, misinformation about Covid vaccines and election falsehoods,” but it quietly changed policies, and now it’s leaving a lot of once-moderated content up in the wake of Trump/GOP pressure. https://t.co/YOf4AiKR6Q

— tony romm (@TonyRomm) June 9, 2025