Conservative media platform PragerU is suing Google this week over allegations of its educational videos being censored. The company has had 40 of its videos censored by the information and tech giant since October of last year, and believes it’s time to fight the corporation on its extreme violation of free speech laws.
PragerU’s Chief Marketing Officer, Craig Strazzeri appeared on the Feb. 9 Fox and Friends, telling Fox News’s Pete Hegseth, “It’s been a year and a half since we first discovered that our videos are being restricted -- and for anyone who hasn’t seen a PragerU video, they’re all five minutes long, they feature some of the best thinkers in the world on life’s most important topics.”
For example, their video on the Iraq War could be searched for with no results, while millions of videos on the same subject from different viewpoints were there to be be accessed. This has led PragerU to believe that “they’re targeting us because we are conservative.”
Last November, Newsbusters reported on one of these earlier instances of censorship via youtube restrictions.
Initially, PragerU had hoped that the apparent censorship was an algorithmic error or some sort of other mistake, but now “have it in writing from Google and Youtube that they manually reviewed our videos, and after manually reviewing them, they deemed them ‘inappropriate for young people.’”
Hegseth then presented the viewers with a list of other PragerU videos deemed ‘inappropriate for young people.” They include: How Iraq was Won and Lost, Gun Rights Are Women’s Rights, Why America Must Lead, What’s Wrong with E-cigarettes, and Why America’s Military Must be Strong.
The host asked why would topics such as these be put in restricted mode, when the mode is “used to block pornographic, sexual, violent, and/or mature content?” Strazzeri replied that it is “really scary and sad” that Google is restricting “educational content. It’s clearly because we have a conservative point of view ... So what’s next is we’ve been left with no choice but to file a lawsuit.”
Strazzeri noted the irony that “Google’s mission statement is to organize the world’s information and make the information accessible to all,” and yet PragerU must “fight Goliath,” so that the next generation of conservatives won’t be barred from receiving important educational content.
Youtube recently replied to Fox News and PragerU’s censorship allegations by claiming that putting videos on restricted mode is not necessarily censorship and that it’s just another filter that people can access should they choose to.
On Fox and Friends, Stazzeri was having none of it. “It’s funny that they say it’s optional,” he said “because if you look at Youtube’s website, if you look at the restricted mode description of what restricted mode is, It says right there on their own website, that many schools, libraries, and public places will have restricted mode in place and the user is not able to turn it off.”
Many public computers do not allow the public user access to the administrative function that changes the settings as far as web browsing goes. So clearly, there is a swath of people, especially younger users at school, who definitely can’t see these videos. And honestly, who’s looking out for restricted mode in the first place? If one doesn’t see the video come up, they most likely will take it at face value. Very sneaky there, Google.
