YouTube has said its removals of right-wing video channels were a mistake, something conservative users are finding hard to believe. YouTube blamed the blunder on the inexperience of its newly hired force of moderators.
“As we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals,” a YouTube spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We’re continuing to enforce our existing policies regarding harmful and dangerous content, they have not changed. We’ll reinstate any videos that were removed in error.”
However, many did not see it this way. Several outspoken conservative personalities voiced their disdain for the snafu, accusing YouTube of bias in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school shooting.
The actions are in line with a Dec. 4 public statement from Google CEO Susan Wojcicki. The statement pledges the commission of a 10,000-strong team of moderators to crack down on rising occurrences of hate speech.
Wojcicki brought in the staffers after complaints arose from users that content unsuitable for children was sneaking past the company’s kids filter. Additional problems cropped up after victims of mass shootings became the targets of online abuse, in addition to conspiracy theories. She plans to bring “the total number of people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies to over 10,000 in 2018,” it continued.
Conservative educational website PragerU filed a February 23 lawsuit against Google and YouTube after some of its content was blocked. PragerU accused the video platform of using the moderation system as a “political gag” to silence the “views of leading conservative speakers and scholars.”
“This is speech discrimination plain and simple: censorship based entirely on the perceived identity and political viewpoint of the speaker not on the content of the speech,” the lawsuit stated. A petition was also launched demanding YouTube stops blocking conservative videos.
Earlier in February right-wing and conservative users raised the alarm after a surprise Twitter “bot purge” left many of them thousands of followers short. Others said they were forced to provide and verify a telephone number to log back in. Using the hashtag #TwitterLockOut, activists accused the social network of anti-conservative bias.
Liberal commenters in the hashtagged thread implied the multitude of lost followers had all been “Russian bots.” Twitter, releasing a statement in the aftermath, said it solely aimed to keep the platform “safe and free from spam.”
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Aha!
So, I see now that I’ve been censored here as I was on Disqus. This from a site who’s moderator says to me:
“As it is already stated clearly in our TOS, we DO NOT CENSOR any kinds of comments whatsoever. Here you have total freedom of speech, you can be a leftist communist, SJW, progressive, nazi, whatever you want.”
Sure! I was told my comment was removed for moderation, and it’s been in “moderation” for several hours now. Just like Disqus did. How about that! And this for calling out Disqus and quoting that moderator in my post!!!!
There is no end of lying, deceit, and hypocrisy online. Goodbye EU Times. You really let me down.
Of course it’s censorship! Of course they make weak excuses to cover it up. Disqus does the same!
Having researched it I know I’m far from alone in this, having my conservative views in comments on conservative sites such as Breitbart, Amercian Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and American Renaissance removed, blocked, marked as spam, and held up in supposed moderation indefinitely. Note they will mark your comment as spam, while allowing quite obvious Google spam to appear freely.
I knew I’d been censored on Disqus for a long time, and even posted it in Disqus comments, my posts being removed quickly for the most part, until one got through long enough to draw this response:
…you are 100% correct. This is a EUTimes moderator you are talking to. I have investigated what you said and we have just discovered that your comment was lost in a black hole. We knew the exact date of your comment because it was synced with our own database yet it was nowhere to be seen inside the Disqus dashboard. it wasn’t under Approved comments, not in Spam and not even in Deleted as we assumed you might have deleted your own comment. And definitely it wasn’t under Pending either. The comment was literally in the abyss, nowhere to be found. I imagine we lost dozens if not even hundreds of comments this way. Disqus most likely took the liberty to delete comments on our website as if it was theirs. As it is already stated clearly in our TOS, we DO NOT CENSOR any kinds of comments whatsoever. Here you have total freedom of speech, you can be a leftist communist, SJW, progressive, nazi, whatever you want. If anyone believes someone is wrong, engage in debate and disprove with arguments. Furthermore at least 300 comments were found not to be SYNCED with our website. After this discovery we have permanently removed Disqus from our website and we will NEVER EVER install any 3rd party apps that would act as a intermediary with our comments.
At this point Disqus has blacklisted me on every conservative site that uses their software. I had just set up a new account, but now if I try to use it I get a message that the site requires validation of my email, which they never did before, and to click here to request it. I clicked there are 8 different sites using Disqus, and never got verification email from any of them. I am quite sure that it’s not the sites asking me to verify my email, but Disqus which makes sure my click goes into the abyss.
I am left to conclude that Disqus has blocked my IP from commenting anywhere they are in charge of comments. Disqus personnel will falsely claim that it is the sites using their software doing this, and this is what they want you to think, even if you have given no reason at all for those sites to do this. Disqus is a Leftist backdoor into conservative websites for the purpose of censoring conservative views, plan and simple. EU Times moderator confirmed it and note that EU Times ditched Disqus for very good reason!
Bull$hit. It was by far NO Accident. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8bd8c9cde0b2cccbfb50cba2c78a356ae500bd18f9e230fcd56cea13cc6effb1.jpg