Google restoring banned accounts is about tyranny, not free speech
The news that Google will be restoring certain banned accounts on their YouTube platform is being heralded by Donald Trump and pretty much the rest of MAGA/Republican world as a “remarkable shift” in the name of free speech. But for those of us not drinking the orange Kool-Aid, we know that this decision had nothing to do with liberty and everything to do with tyranny and the duopoly’s use of government power to control the narrative.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim “Sexual abuse? What sexual abuse?” Jordan, an attorney for Google announced a series of changes to be implemented to restore “conservative” accounts that were banned as a result of “unacceptable pressure” from Joe Biden to censor speech involving COVID and the 2020 election (via National Review):
Google is making major changes to YouTube’s free speech policies following pressure from House Republicans and shifts among its top competitors.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), an attorney for Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, announced a series of changes to YouTube’s approach to free speech, including the return of banned creators to the platform and the implementation of a community notes system to replace third-party fact-checkers.
YouTube is rolling back its restrictive policies surrounding political speech, especially the Covid-19 pandemic and elections. The video platform said its reliance on public health authorities was well intentioned but expressed regret at its impact on public debate on issues that were far from settled.
More broadly, YouTube admitted senior Biden administration officials conducted extensive outreach to YouTube to influence its approach to “misinformation” and Covid-19 content that did not violate YouTube’s policies.
“Senior 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,” the letter reads. (Emphasis mine)
That’s good news, right? Not really. Google essentially admitted that they allowed Biden to use their platforms as a propaganda arm of government to control the narrative in his favor and that they will now allow Donald Trump to do the same. How did I reach that conclusion? I take you all the way back to a couple of months ago when Donald Trump played the dictator card by threatening to shut down Google for operating in a manner displeasing to him.
In a column written by the founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, Adam Kovacevich, we learned of Trump’s plan to punish Google for exercising its free speech rights — which means they were allowing content unfavorable to Dear Leader (via Newsweek):
It should come as no surprise that the man who vowed to be a dictator only on “day one” has spent the first six months of his presidency trying to assert control over companies and institutions. President Donald Trump has attempted to bully his perceived foes into silence or submission.
When Judge Amit Mehta ruled against Google in early 2024, the company’s competitors and critics came out of the woodwork for a gleeful round of remedy wishcasting. Former President Joe Biden’s DOJ, riding a wave of anti-corporatism on the left, proposed a far-reaching set of remedies that strayed well beyond the original case.
As the remedies stage unfolded this year, Trump’s DOJ made clear that it didn’t see this case as a matter of competition policy, but as a vehicle to punish Google for exercising its free speech rights.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche dropped the pretense at the start of the remedies trial, telling reporters that the case was necessary because “Google has deplatformed conservative speech and has put its thumb on the scale politically for years.” Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater went even further, calling Google a threat to “our freedom of speech, our freedom of thought.”
Never mind that the actual case says nothing about speech or censorship. To Trump’s administration, this is about control, not market share. And they’re pulling every lever they can to make sure this case ends the way Trump wants.
Kovacevich believed at the time that the remedies being proposed “would put Trump appointees directly under the hood of Google’s search engine for the next three to six years” and would include an allowance for Trump to “hand-pick a five-person ‘technical committee’ with broad control over Google’s business and products for a decade.”
The 2024 ruling mentioned above is significant in the timeline of Trump’s plans concerning Google. During a FOX Business interview with Maria Bartiromo during his 2024 campaign, Trump went on a tirade about unfavorable news coverage of the alleged assassination attempt made on his life and issued a threat against Google to “shut down” the media giant for being “very bad” to him and his campaign. Toward the end of the interview, Trump mulled stripping Google of its Section 230 protections and praised Elon Musk and X.
Trump’s mention of stripping Google of Section 230 protection — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from certain liabilities for user posts and moderating decisions — is a threat that should be taking very seriously. Why? Because, if Section 230 is “reformed,” online speech for millions of Americans could be effectively cancelled since companies would be unable and/or unwilling to assume legal responsibility for every word posted on their website.
This was not an isolated incident; Trump issued similar threats against Google during his first term in office.
Section 230 “reform” was attempted in the waning days of Trump’s first term with help from Attorney General Bill Barr and a few members of Trump’s bought-and-paid-for Republican Party to take down the First Amendment, punish political enemies, and give government mafia style control of the internet.
Trump introduced an executive order given the Orwellian politispeak title: “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship.” The order called for the FCC to create new rules to determine when Section 230 should apply and when it shouldn’t. This was the motivation behind Lindsey Graham’s Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act — a bill to allegedly protect children from online sexual predators instead of giving government more control the internet and free speech.
The EARN IT Act would have given government complete authority to grant . . . or deny . . . Section 230 protection for social media platforms based on their “compliance” with a set of arbitrary and capricious rules established by the government.
Unfortunately, Lindsey Graham, this time joined by Dick Durbin (D-IL), is once again making Section 230 reform a top priority.
Taking down companies like Google and unfavorable social media outlets is part of Project 2025 and Agenda 47, as I documented in an article, Project 2025 and Agenda 47: Donald Trump’s plan for a police state. Both of these documents call for granting Trump dictatorial power to shut down free speech and rein in the free press.
Donald Trump has made his tyranny known to all, and if he has his way, Google will join Facebook and several network television outlets who have caved to his abuse of power and became another arm of his propaganda machine.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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