YouTube welcomes back conservative and anti-vax creators (among others)

YouTube is introducing a pilot “second chance” program, giving previously banned creators the opportunity to create a new channel. The company wrote: 

“We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance — YouTube has evolved and changed over the past 20 years, and we’ve had our share of second chances to get things right with our community too. Our goal is to roll this out to creators who are eligible to apply over the coming months, and we appreciate the patience as we ramp up, carefully review requests, and learn as we go.”

“How about my old channel with all my followers back?” Nope, not happening. New channels only and you're starting from scratch on follower count. 

“Can you at least notify my old subscribers that I launched a new channel?” Absolutely not, but let us direct your attention to our advertising platform where you can boost your videos to reach your desired audience that you already previously built.

Over the next several weeks, eligible creators will begin to see an option to request a new channel when they log into YouTube Studio with their previously terminated channel. Why would they still be logging into their terminated channels? Anyway…

YouTube's announcement conveniently left off that the move was made under political pressure after Republican Representative Jim Jordan issued multiple subpoenas to the company over its censorship practices. 

Here's a quick recent history of when YouTube's censorship began to attract political attention: 

• In 2020, YouTube announced that it would remove videos with covid and other vaccine misinformation.
• After the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, YouTube also said it would give a strike to channels spreading 2020 election misinformation.
• Shortly after he lost the election, YouTube suspended President Trump from making new uploads.
• The company lifted the restrictions on Trump’s account and dropped some of its covid misinformation policies in 2023.
• More recently YouTube loosened its content moderation policies more broadly to “reflect the new political climate types of discussion and content” it sees on the platform.
• Last month, YouTube also said it would pay $24.5M to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump in 2021 over the ban.

Basically Big Tech collectively has conservative values now.