Big Tech has been hard at work censoring content that runs afoul of the left’s preferred narrative on COVID-19. Now, YouTube is stepping things up a notch and will reportedly begin removing videos questioning any approved medical vaccine.
COVID-19 turned countless institutions into dystopian enforcers, and YouTube is no exception.
YouTube announced Sept. 29 that it will censor so-called “medical misinformation” concerning vaccinations. The new content purges will cover a wide array of vaccine skepticism: “Specifically, content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed.”
Bloomberg News observed that these massive changes will cause a reckoning across the platform:
“To date, YouTube has let people broadcast most anything about vaccines. Its new policy, which goes into effect Wednesday, will remove several prominent accounts that Biden has criticized. That includes Joseph Mercola, a vaccine skeptic with almost half a million YouTube subscribers, and Children’s Health Defense, a group affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
That said, YouTube reportedly will allow for some wiggle room: “[Halprin] said the company will allow ‘scientific discussion’ -- videos about vaccine trials, results and failures. And YouTube will continue to permit personal testimonies, such as a parent talking about their child’s experiences getting vaccinated.” The line will be drawn, however, when “videos aggregate these testimonials into one clip or make broader claims questioning vaccine efficacy, then they will be removed.” Halprin reportedly warned that “[i]t’s only when somebody then turns around and generalizes, ‘It’s not just about my child. Obviously there’s a line there.”
YouTube has a reported history of blunders when it comes to the unpredictable course of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely: censoring conservatives and relying on the hapless World Health Organization (WHO). “YouTube has yanked down a video produced by Stanford University's Hoover Institute featuring public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D., because it ‘contradicts the World Health Organization or local health authorities' medical information about COVID-19,’” The Blaze reported in a Sept. 14, 2020 article.
Big Tech’s trust for the WHO has proven to be extremely problematic since the pandemic began. As late as Jan. 14, 2020, WHO claimed in a tweet: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact YouTube here or send feedback and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on its guidelines and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
