YouTube says creators who were banned for Covid-19, election-related fake news can now come back

YouTube

YouTube will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, softening a policy that had imposed lifetime bans for Covid-19 and election-related misinformation. The change was confirmed in a letter from Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan.

The pilot programme, YouTube said on X, will be limited to a subset of creators and channels that were terminated under rules the company has since retired. The reinstatement process will not automatically restore all channels but will offer a pathway to those affected by policies that no longer exist.

Among the accounts previously banned under those rules were high-profile figures including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Whether these channels will qualify remains unclear.

The policy shift comes after months of Republican criticism of tech companies for what they see as overreach during the Biden administration. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, accusing YouTube of acting as a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”

Donovan’s letter noted that while YouTube did remove Covid-related videos during the pandemic, some removals followed pressure from senior Biden officials despite not violating the platform’s stated policies. Calling the pressure “unacceptable and wrong,” Donovan stressed that YouTube has since ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation policy, winding it down in December 2024.

The platform says it will continue prioritising “free expression” and confirmed it will not outsource moderation to third-party fact-checkers. Instead, YouTube will rely on context labels and information panels to guide viewers. Meta took a similar step earlier this year, scrapping its fact-checking programme on Facebook and Instagram.