Big Tech censorship never takes a fall break, and has kicked into high gear just in time for the 2024 elections.
Google-owned YouTube, Amazon, TikTok, Meta-owned Facebook, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and X all cracked down on free speech — especially election-related content — during the month of September. X suspiciously targeted a former President Donald Trump-affiliated account just before the presidential debate, while Facebook and Amazon Alexa displayed explicit pro-Vice President Kamala Harris bias. YouTube was busy censoring content about Christian persecution and Jan. 6, while LinkedIn continued to enforce COVID-19 groupthink. And over at TikTok, the Communist Chinese government-tied app dubiously removed an exposé about Orwellian digital IDs.
Below are several of the worst examples of Big Tech censorship found in MRC Free Speech America’s exclusive CensorTrack database from the month of September.
1) Amazon Alexa urges users to vote for Harris, not Trump. Multiple X users posted videos of themselves asking Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa the reasons they should vote for Trump. “I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader,” Alexa responded, according to Fox News Digital. When Fox News Digital tested it an additional time, Alexa responded, saying, “I cannot promote content that supports a certain political party or a specific politician. Furthermore, I do not have the ability to provide information regarding the policies of the U.S. government. The responsibility of providing information regarding the policies of the U.S. government lies with the government itself.”
The Amazon assistant did, however, provide reasons to vote for Vice President and Democrat nominee for president Harris, including “that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality throughout the country” and “promises a tough-on-crime approach to battling the violent crime wave that has swept the nation in recent years.”
Of course, Amazon, as Big Tech companies so often do, claimed to Fox News Digital that “[t]his was an error that was quickly fixed.”
2) X imposes pre-debate censorship. Ahead of the first presidential debate between former Trump and Harris, Trump War Room, the “official War Room account of the 2024 Trump campaign,” shared a video of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) ripping the Biden-Harris administration for America’s inflation crisis. Trump War Room captioned the post, “@ByronDonalds: 'Inflation when Donald Trump left office was 1.4% year-over-year... When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris came into office, many states were already back to work... and when they wanted to his 'American Rescue Plan,' which she co-signed, we told them on Capitol Hill, you're going to create a labor shortage, which is going to create inflation.'” In response, X initially slapped an interstitial over the video saying, “Content warning: Adult Content. X labeled this post as containing Adult Content.” Several other posts were similarly labeled, including Trump War Room’s video post of a BBC News clip showing voters criticizing Harris. “Former Pennsylvania steel worker: 'I would believe Donald Trump. I don't believe Harris. She's been there three and a half years and hasn't done nothing,’” Trump War Room wrote in the post.
3) Facebook runs interference for pro-abortion propaganda. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), challenged ABC News’s presidential debate moderators who contradicted Republican presidential candidate Trump’s accusation that there are states that legally allow infanticide. Perkins’s Facebook post had an FRC map showing 15 states that have no legal protections for babies born alive after an attempted abortion. Facebook initially hid the map behind an interstitial, wrongly asserting, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.” The interstitial was later removed, but the warning label remained, linking to leftist fact-checker PolitiFact’s claim, “No legal protections for ‘born alive’ babies in some states? Experts say that’s wrong.” Users were also forced to click to confirm that they wished to share the post.
4) TikTok removes video exposing digital ID program for unspecified reasons. Evita Duffy-Alfonso, Bongino Report’s Early Edition with Evita host, posted a clip of her Sept. 4 show on TikTok, “The new world order is closing in on us fast. Kenya's multi-billion dollar digital ID system intends to digitize citizen's biometric data.” It included a clip of Kenya's Interior and National Administration cabinet secretary Kithure Kindiki explaining the “automated biometric identification system, which … involves the iris, fingerprints as well as facial recognition.” She subsequently shared a screenshot on X showing TikTok removed the clip for allegedly violating “our Community Guidelines.”
5) YouTube censors description of Christian persecution. Radio talk show host Michael Savage said in a live broadcast on X and Facebook that YouTube suspended him for a week after he shared an eight-year-old compilation video. One of his listeners had compiled clips of Savage discussing Christmas, the genocide of Christians by Muslims in the Middle East and efforts to help persecuted Christians. YouTube’s removal notice described some of the video’s content as “violent or graphic.” While the video wasn’t removed, YouTube issued a strike and a one-week suspension against Savage’s account.
6) X censors post about reports of illegal migrants eating pets. The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project posted on its X account, “We have obtained an Aug. 28 police report from Springfield, Ohio where a caller alleged that their cat was stolen and chopped up. We have not verified any of the allegations and are disclosing the source material only due to immense public interest.” The post also showed a screenshot of a police report page. X imposed an interstitial filter over the video requiring users to click through the warning: “Content warning: Adult Content. X labeled this post as containing Adult Content."
7) Microsoft’s LinkedIn still enforces COVID-19 dogma. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden MD, a critic of government and leftist COVID-19 narratives, stated that LinkedIn removed a post from her account as “misinformation.” She said in her post the following: “Unexplained rashes, serious severe pain, fatigue, POTS, neurological tinnitus, Bell's palsy, stroke,... ." In a follow up X post, she completed the thought she began in the LinkedIn post, “... stroke, myocarditis... yet these [COVID-19] shots are still on the market.”
8) YouTube Is still obsessed with January 6. The Babylon Bee posted a trailer for its January 6 mockumentary. YouTube imposed a fact-checking label linking to the January 6 Wikipedia page, saying, “On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of then–U.S. President Donald Trump in an attempted self-coup d'état two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.” The Babylon Bee is a member of MRC’s Free Speech Alliance.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives 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 using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
