Skip to content
Breaking News Alert Justice Jackson Complains First Amendment Is 'Hamstringing' Feds' Censorship Efforts

YouTube Is Wiping Trump’s CPAC Speech — Unless The Videos Discredit It

YouTube wipes Trump CPAC speech

According to YouTube, the videos violate its supposedly “nonpartisan” community guidelines unless they contain qualifiers about “misleading election claims.”

Share

Google’s YouTube is nuking videos of former President Donald Trump’s speech at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) from its platform because the Republican’s references to voter fraud and the 2020 election violate their community guidelines.

Right Side Broadcasting Network announced on Thursday that its coverage of the speech was removed from YouTube and its account was subsequently suspended for two weeks.

“The video was approaching 4 million views. They have also removed it from their platform,” RSBN wrote.

The network had previously tweeted that it would not intentionally remove the video but that it would likely be censored for claims of election fraud.

Other media organizations such as The Independent also reportedly suffered the censorship sweep from YouTube, which removed the outlet’s videos of the full speech as well.

According to YouTube, the videos violate its supposedly “nonpartisan” community guidelines unless they contain qualifiers about “misleading election claims.”

“We enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker or political leaning,” a YouTube spokeswoman told The Federalist. “In accordance with our established presidential election integrity policy, which prohibits content uploaded after the safe-harbor deadline claiming widespread fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we removed this video from Right Side Broadcasting Network.”

The spokeswoman clarified that “content featuring footage from CPAC 2021 that does not violate our policies or contains sufficient educational, documentary, scientific and artistic context remains on YouTube,” but did not elaborate further.

Videos that survived YouTube’s first purge of the speech are still subject to removal under the “presidential election integrity” policy, which states that any content posted after Dec. 9, 2020, “that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of any past U.S. presidential election” will be removed unless they contain qualifiers on Trump’s claims.

YouTube has a history of creating policies to justify its nuking of certain videos, creators, and viewpoints. In early February, YouTube deplatformed LifeSiteNews without warning. Later, YouTube told The Federalist that the pro-life outlet “repeatedly violated our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.”

The same policy was used to justify removing two videos from a Senate hearing about COVID-19 treatments in late January. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson posted about the censorship on Twitter

“Social media censorship just ratcheted up to a new level. Google’s YouTube removed two videos of doctors testifying under oath at my US Senate hearing on early treatment of COVID,” the Wisconsin Republican wrote on Twitter. “Another body blow to freedom of speech and expression. Very sad and scary. Where does this end?”