After serving as the CEO of YouTube for nine years, Susan Wojcicki will be stepping away from her role as CEO, and announced she’ll be resigning. This decision comes following the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) subpoenaing executives from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, as well as Google/YouTube.
“We just subpoenaed Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple regarding Big Tech’s reported collusion with the federal government.
Step one towards accountability.”
We just subpoenaed Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple regarding Big Tech’s reported collusion with the federal government.
Step one towards accountability.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 15, 2023
Wojcicki stated:
“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,”
“The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube,”
“When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was bringing in an incredible leadership team.”
In the past, Wojcicki has been a strong supporter of limiting free political speech on the internet, essentially going as far as to admit that she’d bend for any government request without any issue.
“I think governments can always — our recommendation if governments want to have more control of online speech is to pass laws to have that be very cleanly and clearly defined such that we can implement it.”
“There are times that we see the laws being implemented or being suggested that they’re not necessarily clean or possible for us to cleanly interpret them. And we’ve also seen sometimes there’s laws passed just for the internet as opposed to for all speech,” Wojcicki detailed.
“I do think that’s a dangerous area when we start to get in and say, ‘Oh sure you could say something like this in a magazine or on TV, but you can’t say it on the internet,” she concluded.
Despite Twitter and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) now reallowing former President Donald Trump on their platforms following the January 6th protest, Google/YouTube have dragged their feet on this matter – with Wojcicki saying:
“The channel remains suspended due to the risk of incitement to violence.”
As a result of situations like this, the House GOP has presented subpoenas to multiple different big-tech CEOs, including YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. Many believe this had a role in her decision to step down from her role of YouTube’s CEO.
