YouTube removed a video from the US House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6 because it contained an excerpt from former President Donald Trump that violated the company’s election integrity rules, marking one of the first recorded examples of Big Tech censorship of the panel.
The video, which was released on June 14, reportedly featured a section of former Attorney General William Barr’s testimony, which contained a clip of Trump decrying suspected election meddling during a Fox Business interview.
The inclusion of Trump’s comments violated the tech business’s content guideline, according to YouTube.
A spokesperson of the company Ivy Choi said in a statement: “Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election if it does not provide sufficient context.”
“We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the Jan. 6 committee channel,” the spokesperson added.
It is noteworthy that in the redacted video, Trump claimed that “glitches” in the counting process shifted votes away from him and towards then-candidate Joe Biden, though he provided no evidence to back up his assertions.
Trump said: “We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account.”
Though the committee has aired Barr’s testimony in which he dismissed former President Trump’s false accusations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election as “crazy stuff” and “bulls—”.
YouTube first overlaid the January 6 committee video with a graphic claiming that the video had been removed for violating the company’s terms of service. But the message on the video page has since been changed to “This video is private,” which could suggest that YouTube will enable the committee to release a version of the footage that clearly shows how ridiculous Trump’s assertions are.
YouTube has come under fire from critics who claim it has been unduly censorious in its content control.
But it is also important to note that following the January 6, 2020 riot at the US Capitol, the site banned Trump, as well as several other personalities, alleging different violations of its rules of service.
However, the January 6 committee, which is the House committee probing the Capitol insurgency, filed subpoenas to Twitter, Meta, Reddit, and YouTube, months after demanding documents from more than a dozen social media platforms.
Earlier this year, lawmakers also claimed the businesses’ initial responses were inadequate.
In the case of YouTube, the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson noted in a letter that YouTube was the site where a large amount of communication related to the preparation and execution of the Capitol assault took place, “including live streams of the attack as it was taking place”.
At that time a YouTube spokesperson said it was “actively cooperating” with the committee.
Meanwhile, a request from the committee for Twitter’s internal communications, including Slack discussions concerning how it regulated Tweets about the Capitol incident, has been denied. It was said in response to the request, Twitter has claimed a First Amendment protection, which has created disquiet among the committee.
The committee is arguing in public hearings this month that the Capitol riot was the product of a Trump-led conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results. So far, three hearings have been held by the committee.
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