The former CEO of YouTube passed away last week. The news is tragic for her family, but unfortunately, her public legacy is one of trying to crush free speech.
Wojcicki’s husband posted online, “It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer. Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her.”
Wojcicki announced that she would step down as YouTube CEO in February 2023. Her family will undoubtedly miss her, and her loss will be felt greatly.
Wojcicki certainly did have a global impact as CEO of Google-owned YouTube, but it was hardly one that users will remember fondly. She oversaw an increasingly dangerous and harmful censorship crackdown, including during elections. Her tenure included the appalling anti-free speech campaigns of the 2020 and 2022 elections and also of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For instance, back in 2021, YouTube Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy Leslie Miller testified at a congressional hearing that her company had removed over a million videos that supposedly contained “COVID misinfo.” That included more than 130,000 videos related to “Covid vaccine misinfo.”
Yet in August 2022, less than a year later, YouTube quietly updated its COVID-19 medical misinformation policy on masks, vaccines, and social distancing after it became obvious even to leftists that some of the supposed “conspiracy theories” turned out to be true.
Interestingly, earlier that year, Wojcicki herself had bragged about YouTube’s censorship efforts against “misinformation” at a World Economic Forum meeting. She still claimed that YouTube was a free-speech platform. This was and is consistently a feature of her tenure and YouTube’s continuing policy, namely, censoring alleged “misinformation” that sometimes or often turns out to be true, and that is certainly protected free speech, even while paying lip service to free speech online.
And again, YouTube was guilty of potential election interference in 2020 and after. The platform promoted individuals falsely labeling the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story a hoax with hallmarks of “Russian disinformation” but censored videos exposing how different the standards are for Democrats claiming rigged elections versus Republicans doing so. Why was the one lie not considered “misinformation” but the latter truthful reporting was?
MRC’s CensorTrack shows dozens of instances of election-related censorship (censorship of candidates or content about elections) just after the 2020 election and also for the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. (Disclosure: I contribute content to MRC.)
For example, YouTube banned Donald Trump in 2021. That was, of course, under Wojcicki’s leadership. In 2022, YouTube was one of the companies identified as coordinating online censorship with Biden White House officials.
Nor did YouTube engage in political censorship only for U.S.-focused content under Wojcicki. In December 2022, amidst massive freedom protests in China, YouTube censored content about the anti-regime protestors.
Unfortunately, Wojcicki’s tenure as CEO of YouTube included a series of egregious First Amendment violations and politically biased crackdowns. That is the public legacy she leaves behind.
