Newly created YouTube accounts for the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and far-right commentator Nick Fuentes were both taken down hours after their creation, despite anticipation that the platform would begin reinstating banned accounts.
“The censorship war is still on it looks like,” Breanna Morello of Jones’s Infowars network said in a video on Thursday. “They’re trying to stop Infowars. They’re trying to stop Alex Jones.”
“Sounds a little ridiculous,” Fuentes wrote on X. “Can’t we just have free speech? I’ve been banned since February 2020 when I was 21 years old.”
Many on the right had been expecting a flood of reinstated accounts in the coming days. Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, shared a letter earlier this week from YouTube’s parent company, where Alphabet said it would give creators who were banned for repeat violations of Covid-19 and elections-related content policies that are no longer in effect the chance to rejoin.
Jordan, appearing to overstate the extent of the company’s commitments, wrote on X on Tuesday the change would “offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform.”
YouTube wrote on X on Thursday the reinstatement effort hadn’t begun yet.
“We terminated these channels as it’s still against our rules for previously terminated users to start new channels,” according to the company. “The pilot program for terminations that many people have been referencing this week isn’t available yet and will be a limited pilot program to start. We’ll have more on how the program will work, who is eligible, and how creators can access it soon.“
Jones and Fuentes may not be eligible to rejoin under the program even when it does get going.
Jones was taken off YouTube prior to the pandemic in 2018 for violations including hate speech and child endangerment, and Fuentes was banned in 2020 for hate speech.
Nonetheless, some criticized the moves to remove their channel.
Trump administration ally and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy compared the removals to the temporary suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who was briefly taken off the air following pressure from the Trump administration and local affiliates.
“Our country is at its best when we’re able to hear one another. Nick Fuentes & Jimmy Kimmel probably don’t like me, for different reasons,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “I don’t care. It’s still un-American to muzzle the peaceful expression of opinions. And no, that’s not a legal point, it’s a cultural point.”
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