Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding answers after YouTube’s algorithm deleted comments criticizing China.
On Wednesday, the Missouri Republican wrote to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google (YouTube’s parent company), demanding he “respond to troubling reports that your company has resumed its long pattern of censorship at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party” and calling the “kowtowing” from the company “unacceptable.”
Hawley cited a 2019 instance in which Google Translate mistranslated the phrase, “I am sad to see Hong Kong become part of China,” as “I am happy to see Hong Kong become part of China.” On Tuesday, YouTube responded to reports that it was automatically deleting anti-Chinese government comments by calling the censorship an “error” and denying that it was intentional.
The senator fired back by accusing the company of selling out its stated values to increase revenue.
“YouTube dismissed the censorship of these terms as ‘an error,’ but this purported ‘error’ follows a long, disturbing pattern of Google censoring content to try to gain favor with the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “Until 2010, for example, you actively censored content through your search engine Google.cn, which operated in China. Despite your stated commitments to free speech, you were happy to censor if it meant obtaining more revenue.”
Hawley gave Pichai until June 12 to explain how the terms “communist bandit” and “50-cent party” came to be censored on YouTube, any discussions Google executives had concerning a “potential conflict between Google’s financial interest in developing products for the Chinese market,” and whether Google had discussions with Chinese officials or proxies of the Chinese Communist Party about the terms “communist bandit” or “50-cent party.”
