The American Conservative Union (ACU) reported on Sunday that tech giant YouTube deleted an ACU video covering President Donald Trump’s class-action lawsuits against, among others, Google, which owns YouTube. The ACU is prohibited from posting new content on YouTube for one week.
Two days after ACU uploaded an episode of its show America UnCanceled, on the CPAC NOW network, that featured Trump announcing his upcoming lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google, YouTube issued a strike against ACU and removed the episode. The strike prevented ACU from posting coverage of the Dallas CPAC conference, particularly Trump’s July 11 speech.
“It is clear that YouTube censored CPAC because we stood with former President Donald Trump on his lawsuit against Big Tech,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the ACU. “This is yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor.”
Exactly what the ACU did to run afoul of YouTube’s nebulous community guidelines was unclear. The video-hosting platform cited its policy regarding “medical misinformation” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason the video was taken down.
YouTube did not specify the “medical misinformation” that the video offered, but ACU supposed it was because former President Trump referenced a study conducted by the Smith Center for Infectious Diseases & Urban Health and Saint Barnabas Medical Center that claimed that the drug hydroxychloroquine was effective in treating COVID-19.
Trump himself took hydroxychloroquine when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 in October of 2020.
Trump also announced plans last week to sue Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for banning him on their platforms after the January 6 protests at the Capitol building in Washington.
Twitter — which was largely how Trump communicated directly with the public during his administration — explained that two tweets of the former president posted January 8 ran afoul of their Glorification of Violence Policy. One tweet referenced his supporters and said they would continue to have a voice in American politics and the second simply said he would not be attending the inauguration on January 20.
How does any of that “glorify violence”?
A more reasonable explanation as to why YouTube chose to censor the ACU was its announcement last Wednesday that it too planned to join in the lawsuits against the big tech oligopoly’s assault on the free speech of Americans.
“It is my honor to stand alongside President Trump and the brave citizens from across the country who had the courage to stand up to Big Tech, even though they have little power, except for their rights enshrined in the Constitution, including the First Amendment, which is the birthright of every American,” Schlapp said. “This lawsuit will break the stranglehold Big Tech has over our freedom to speak.”
This past weekend, the ACU was hosting this year’s second CPAC conference in Dallas, where Trump spoke on Sunday. The former president wasn’t kind to Big Tech in his one hour and thirty minute-plus speech.
“The New York Post wrote one of the biggest scandals ever to emerge in a presidential election, providing extraordinary, detailed evidence of the corruption of Joe Biden and, where’s Hunter?” Trump recalled.
“Then, without any basis whatsoever, Twitter and Facebook banned the New York Post account of this terrible story,” Trump said. “After the election, one poll showed that at least 10 percent of Joe Biden’s voters would have switched their vote if they had known about Joe and Hunter Biden’s scandal.”
In a Wall Street Journal piece from July 8, Trump noted that Big Tech platforms in the 21st century have become a new type of town square — a square that only those with the “right” opinions, as determined by the tech companies themselves, may take advantage of.
“Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations,” Trump wrote. “The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media — banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends.”
To say Big Tech companies are drunk with their own power during the presidency of Joe Biden is an understatement. They have literally deemed themselves judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to free speech in America.
It’s time for them to decide what they are. Are they publishers? If so, they are liable to be sued by those whom they besmirch with their bans and censorship. Or are they simply a utility, much like phone companies or Internet providers? Either way, their protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act need to be rescinded. They cannot be allowed censorship privileges if they owe allegiance to one political ideology over another.
