But for the White House to ask Google to review a video that was causing trouble in a foreign land was an unusual step — and perhaps unprecedented. McLaughlin, the former Google and White House official, could think of no similar request in the past.
Both government and Google officials said the company made its own decision after the White House raised the issue of the video on Tuesday, the day that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
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“We reached out to YouTube to call the video to their attention and asked them to review whether it violates their terms of use,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Friday.
Google said it decided to block the video in Egypt and Libya because of the “very sensitive situations there” and not because the White House requested it.
A company official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal thinking at Google, said, “Dealing with controversial content is one of the biggest challenges we face as a company.”
The decision has drawn an uneasy reaction, with some civil libertarians blasting Google for essentially censoring access for some potential viewers. For critics, the decision recalled Google’s former compliance with Chinese government restrictions on a wide range of content — before the company moved its offices and servers to Hong Kong in 2010, beyond the reach of Chinese censorship laws.
The motives of both Google and the White House drew suspicion this week, with some saying that U.S. officials might have sought to send a political message — distancing the United States from the anti-Muslim video — by revealing their efforts to have it blocked. The officials had no legal authority to demand action, legal experts say.
“It’s a little bit of censorship and a little bit of diplomacy in a difficult situation,” said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties for the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.
Yet the controversy has highlighted how much of the world’s information is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of powerful companies. Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain said these “corporate gatekeepers” are essential to keeping free speech robust.
He praised efforts to establish guidelines for when content is removed or blocked from some viewers. Yet he said many hard decisions will come when actual cases arise.
“Anyone who says this is a no-brainer, I’m dubious about,” Zittrain said. “Because it’s not a no-brainer, and it’s not going to go away.”
David Nakamura and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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