Several American big tech companies took advantage of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January to relax some content moderation rules, as was the case with Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram.
Now, it seems that YouTube has also made some changes to its content moderation policies in favor of the discourse of “freedom of expression.”
But while Meta and X spoke publicly about the changes, YouTube’s were more subtle, according to an analysis by The New York Times, which revealed that the platform introduced new content moderation rules last December.
In a report published by the newspaper last Monday (9), they revealed that YouTube raised the threshold of offensive content allowed to half of the video. Previously, it was a quarter.
Furthermore, the site also encouraged moderators to keep these videos online, something that, according to the newspaper, may benefit political commentators who previously accused the platform of “censorship.”
With these changes, YouTube, which belongs to Google, has joined the group of companies that have loosened their content moderation rules.
Meta ended its fact-checking program in January, while X (formerly Twitter) shifted content moderation responsibility to users.
“Our goal remains the same: to protect freedom of expression on YouTube while mitigating serious harm,” argued Nicole Bell, YouTube spokesperson.
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