YouTube Poten­tial­ly Sig­nals Con­tin­ued Com­mit­ment to Cen­sor­ship Ahead of 2024 Elec­tions

YouTube Potentially Signals Continued Commitment to Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections

YouTube has dis­closed the company’s four new focus areas ahead of the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. To many, these guide­lines look like a pol­i­cy of fur­ther cen­sor­ship on the video-shar­ing plat­form. 

As report­ed by Reclaim The Net on Thurs­day, YouTube has released a new video on its blog dis­cussing its four new areas of focus with its new chief prod­uct offi­cer, Johan­na Voolich. 
Dur­ing the inter­view, pub­lished on Wednes­day, Voolich not­ed that “respon­si­bil­i­ty” is one of the three areas she focus­es on when devel­op­ing prod­ucts. She said, “We want to do this in a way to make sure that YouTube is a respon­si­ble actor in soci­ety.”
Voolich’s remarks raise some seri­ous ques­tions about what the pol­i­cy cre­ators and mod­er­a­tors at YouTube believe being a respon­si­ble actor would look like, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the lead-up to a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. YouTube has defined what the term means for its poli­cies in the past, Reclaim The Net report­ed. 
Accord­ing to a blog pub­lished on Sept. 3, 2019, YouTube has 4R’s of respon­si­bil­i­ty:
“1. Remove con­tent that vio­lates our pol­i­cy as quick­ly as …