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The liberal media is getting a firsthand lesson that the beast they helped create will eventually swallow them up as well.
With online censorship and the sophistication behind it reaching unprecedented levels, The Hill learned Wednesday evening that YouTube has suspended their account for seven days.
The reason behind the temporary suspension was the airing of clips featuring former President Donald Trump talking about the 2020 election being rigged — YouTube declared in December 2020 that any talk of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election was verboten, and 14 months later the dictate still stands.
Robby Soave, co-host on The Hill’s “Rising” program, announced the disciple in an article on Reason, where he is a senior editor.
“Last night, we learned that YouTube had suspended The Hill’s entire account for the next seven days, preventing us from publishing new videos. The reason was election misinformation, stemming from two previous videos. The first video in question, which was not aired as part of Rising, was raw footage of Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 26, during which he made false claims about the election,” he wrote.
What happened? We covered former President Trump’s remarks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a soundbite, he repeated his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Our discussion focused on what Trump said about Putin and did not explicitly rebut claims of election fraud.
— Rising (@HillTVLive) March 3, 2022
Soave comically remarked on how far-reaching YouTube’s policy is, as if there is some justification for censorship.
“Not only does YouTube punish channels that spread misinformation, but in many cases, it also punishes channels that report on the spread of misinformation,” he said, with an emphasis on “report.”
“The platform makes no distinction between the speaker and the content creator,” Soave explained. “If a channel produces a straight-news video that merely shows Trump making an unfounded election-related claim — perhaps during a speech, in an interview, or at a rally—YouTube would punish the channel as if the channel had made the claim, even if no one affiliated with the channel endorsed Trump’s lies.”
He said YouTube suspended his show “despite the fact that neither my co-hosts nor I had said anything to indicate that we believe the election was rigged.”
In noting that the second clip was on Fox News host Laura Ingraham interviewing Trump, and the former president blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the rigged election, Soave shared his liberal bonafides, explaining that he and his co-host criticized Trump but that “neither of us explicitly corrected the ‘rigged election’ claim.”
“But YouTube has taken the position that merely acknowledging an utterance of the false claim is the same thing as making the claim yourself unless you correct and disavow it elsewhere in the video,” he said.
Soave complained that the policy “effectively outlaws straight news reporting on YouTube.”
“It is one thing for YouTube to ban people who are making false claims. It is quite another for YouTube to prohibit people from educating their viewers about the reality that the former president is still spreading these false claims,” he wrote, adding that “such a policy could also imperil work being done by content creators that are trying to counter misinformation.”
Seems Soave is okay with others’ “misinformation” being censored, so long as he is not caught up in the Orwellian dragnet.
“YouTube is a private company, of course, and it’s free to design whatever policies it wants. No one is owed a video channel,” he concluded. “But I don’t think most people are aware of just how vast the misinformation policy has become. I understood that the platform would punish content creators who made false statements about the election. I had no idea that YouTube would punish news channels for reporting the news.”
Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story from Twitter: (** Language warning)
Doesn’t this sound like something you would hear in a dystopian movie? “We know dear leader and the regime were duly and delightfully elected and look forward to having our ration of bread again this winter.” https://t.co/e3vkkcoBbg
— Drill Chamberlain (@DrilChamberlain) March 4, 2022
Ha! Look at these sniveling toads, groveling to the Ministry of Information, and swearing that they never have any Wrongthink. https://t.co/sHSeFYJXJL
— swindleVision (@swindleVision) March 3, 2022
Move to Rumble please. Many of us are eager to make the switch. Youtube is compromised.
— Moskito Byte (@MoskitoByte1) March 4, 2022
This is so fucking dumb. Where was YouTube when Stacey abrams said she was the rightful governor of Georgia. Or Hillary won the election legitimately. It’s skewed to one side. Also I hate big tech treating us like children. People shouldn’t need big tech to censor “misinformatio
— Johnny Nev (@offroadpickle) March 4, 2022
Okay, but all this censorship makes me think the election was probably stolen.
— Infernal Does It Again ⬛🟧 (@InfernalStreams) March 3, 2022
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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