On Tuesday, conservative talk show host Josh Bernstein interviewed prominent author and activist Pamela Geller about her new book FATWA: Hunted in America. After the interview, Bernstein shared it on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and YouTube.
However, after only 15 minutes of being uploaded to YouTube, it was censored, flagged, and de-monetized, Bernstein told us. YouTube’s reasoning, he said, was the standard one given to conservatives, namely that “your video is not advertiser friendly” and “therefore does not meet our standards for monetization.”
Bernstein’s interview with Geller does not have incendiary language nor does it contain any images of violence. It simply tells the truth about radical Islam. It does not incite, inflame, or encourage violence nor does it ridicule, offend, or minimize a religion or class of people.
Here’s the video Bernstein posted, which we were able to access as of this writing, indicating that the site may have had a change of heart:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
“In this powerful and explosive interview Pamela discusses the many attempts on her life, why she is 100% certain the Las Vegas shooting was ISIS, and how she saved countless lives by holding her cartoon drawing contest in Garland Texas,” Bernstein said in the video description.
We posted his video to our Facebook page and discovered that we could not boost the video, unlike others we have posted.
This kind of behavior is nothing new for YouTube.
As we recently reported, PragerU sued YouTube and Google for doing the same thing to many of their videos.
“Watch any one of our videos and you’ll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven. For the record, our videos are presented by some of the finest minds in the Western world, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, former prime ministers, and professors from the most prestigious universities in America,” PragerU founder Dennis Prager said.
“They are engaging in an arbitrary and capricious use of their ‘restricted mode’ and ‘demonetization’ to restrict non-left political thought. Their censorship is profoundly damaging because Google and YouTube own and control the largest forum for public participation in video-based speech in not only California, but the United States, and the world,” he added.
“This is speech discrimination plain and simple, censorship based entirely on unspecified ideological objection to the message or on the perceived identity and political viewpoint of the speaker,” former California Governor Pete Wilson of Browne George Ross said. “Google and YouTube’s use of restricted mode filtering to silence PragerU violates its fundamental First Amendment rights under both the California and United States Constitutions. It constitutes unlawful discrimination under California law, is a misleading and unfair business practice, and breaches the warranty of good faith and fair dealing implied in Google and YouTube’s own Terms of Use and ‘Community Guidelines.’”
A number of other conservatives, including media analyst Mark Dice, Trump supporters Diamond and Silk and Paul Joseph Watson, have also seen their videos restricted and/or demonetized for the very same reasons. As a result, many have turned to sites like Patreon as a way to help make up for the loss of revenue.
Bernstein has also created a Patreon page, which can be seen here.
Exit question: Is it time conservative YouTubers file a class action suit against the social media site? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
Related:
- PragerU sues Google, YouTube over alleged censorship of conservative videos
- Diamond and Silk threaten lawsuit against YouTube for discrimination — Video
- Google, YouTube locks account of professor critical of politically-correct gender-neutral pronouns
- YouTube to work with liberal ADL, censor non-rulebreaking content
- YouTube under fire for ‘Heroes’ program that lets trolls mass-delete videos they disagree with
If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. And be sure to check out our new MeWe page here.
If you appreciate independent conservative reports like this, please go here and support us on Patreon.
And if you’re as concerned about online censorship as we are, go here and order this book (Remember, half of what we earn will be donated to Hurricane Harvey relief):
