YouTube Joins Other Big Tech Platforms, Censors President Donald Trump

January 13th, 2021 4:23 PM

YouTube has joined Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok and even Shopify in censoring President Donald Trump.

The platform suspended Trump’s account “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.”

“1/ After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It now has its 1st strike & is temporarily prevented from uploading new content for a *minimum* of 7 days,” YouTube said in a tweet

“2/ Given the ongoing concerns about violence, we will also be indefinitely disabling comments on President Trump’s channel, as we’ve done to other channels where there are safety concerns found in the comments section. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/...” 

YouTube’s Community Guidelines stated that the platform operates on a “strike” system. The first strike “means you won't be able to do the following for one week:

  • “Upload videos, live streams, or stories
  • “Create custom thumbnails or Community posts
  • “Created, edit, or add collaborators to playlists
  • “Add or remove playlists from the watch page using the ‘Save’ button
  • “Show a trailer during your Premieres
  • “Send viewers from a live stream to a Premiere or send viewers from a Premiere to a live stream”

If a user receives a second strike within 90 days of their first strike, the user “will not be able to post content for 2 weeks,” state YouTube’s Community Guidelines. “If there are no further issues, full privileges will be restored automatically after the 2-week period, but each strike expires 90 days from the time it was issued.”

If a user gets a third strike in the same 90 day period, it will result in the user’s channel “being permanently removed from YouTube.”

Although Trump’s channel has been suspended for at least seven days, at the time of publishing this piece, his account was still visible on the platform.

YouTube's suspension of Trump’s channel is only the latest in a series of examples of leftist bias from the platform. YouTube removed over 300 ads from Trump’s reelection campaign during the summer of 2019 alone. In November of 2020, the platform suspended OAN. That same month, YouTube bowed to transgender activists and deleted Candace Owens’ podcast.

Conservatives are under attack. Contact YouTube at 650-253-0000 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.