YouTube users who were banned from the service for violating its policies related to issues like the 2020 election results or Covid-19 misinformation may soon be able to rejoin the platform.
The Google-owned video platform on Thursday opened a new return-to-YouTube process for users with “lifetime terminations,” offering them a chance to rejoin the service. The programme is particularly focused on users who were banned for violations that are no longer against YouTube’s rules. In recent years, YouTube retired policies related to discussions around Covid-19, for example, or that limited claims the 2020 election was stolen to allow for more political speech.
The new process will become available in the coming months. It is unclear which creators will be eligible for the programme. YouTubers previously booted for copyright infringement, or dedicated to violent extremism or endangering young users, will not qualify, the company said.
“We know many terminated creators deserve a second chance,” the company wrote in a blog post. “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.”
Unrelated to Trump settlement
The announcement of the new process comes just one week after Alphabet’s Google paid $24.5 million to settle a legal suit filed by President Donald Trump, who claims that YouTube’s decision to block him from posting to his account following the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol was illegal censorship. (YouTube already restored Trump’s account in 2023.)
A YouTube spokesperson said the decision to now welcome back more suspended creators has been in the works for some time, and is unrelated to the Trump settlement.
YouTube is just the latest social media platform to loosen its content policies and penalties to better meet the Trump-era political moment. Many of those more stringent policies were tightened under former President Joe Biden to target things like hate speech and misinformation following years of complaints from Democrats that tech companies were taking down too little.
Republicans, meanwhile, have accused those same platforms of removing too many posts, and owners of those platforms, including X’s Elon Musk and Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, have changed their approaches to content moderation to more closely align with conservatives’ calls for “free speech.”
Most lucrative social media platform
YouTube is widely considered the most lucrative social media platform for content creators, and the company framed the pilot programme as a way for individuals to once again support their businesses and livelihoods. The move also comes at a time when competition for creators’ loyalty is intensifying — particularly now that it appears TikTok may stay operational in the US for good.
Platforms are jockeying to retain their top creators, who in turn lure their massive followings. YouTube declined to name specific creators that it expects to take advantage of the new program.
YouTubers have long been able to appeal a suspension over a specific piece of content, and those who do so successfully within a year of their suspension can have their channels reinstated as-is. But this new process will enable some users who have been suspended more than one year to launch a fresh channel.
Those who succeed in getting back on YouTube will have to rebuild their audiences from scratch; their prior library of videos will not be restored. Only once they reach 1,000 subscribers, and a certain threshold of hours watched or views on short videos, will they be able to start monetizing their videos again.