YouTube Lifts Restrictions on Trump’s Account after Two Years
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YouTube said Friday it will remove restrictions on former president Donald Trump‘s account, allowing him to post new content for the first time in more than two years.
YouTube suspended Trump’s account in January 2021 in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot after the company said he violated its policies around posting content that incited calls to violence. The restrictions left Trump’s channel in place but prohibited him from posting new content and disabled comments on his videos.
While those restrictions will be lifted, videos that YouTube removed from Trump’s channel, which boasts more than 2.6 million followers, that violated its policies for inciting violence will not be restored.
The move means the former president will also be able to buy YouTube ads for his 2024 campaign.
“We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election,” Leslie Miller, vice president of YouTube Public Policy, said in a statement. “This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”
YouTube’s announcement comes after Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, reinstated Trump’s account in November. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, followed suit in February.
Meta said at the time that it would implement “new guardrails” to “deter repeat offenses,” including “heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol.”
“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, said in a statement.
Trump has yet to make use of the restored accounts, instead preferring to stick to his own Truth Social platform.
