Unlike vampires and werewolves, Big Tech censorship is anything but mythical.
This month, MRC found Google search continued to censor neutral or positive sources and instead cited a discredited and censorship-prone leftist group in search results for allies of President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, X censored a documentary about censorship and TikTok fact-checked news about the U.S. military’s efforts against “narco terrorists.” Even the neighborhood connection platform Nextdoor undermined free speech by suspending a user for sharing daily Bible verses and encouragement for Christians.
Below are the worst censorship cases of October as recorded in MRC’s unique CensorTrack database.
Google maligns Trump allies with biased leftist activist group’s propaganda and suppresses neutral sources. Google Search suppressed neutral information about prominent Trump supporters and instead provided extraordinarily biased sources. For example, in searches for the names of Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, White House advisor Stephen Miller and veteran Navy intelligence officer Jack Posobiec, the tech giant provided users with dossiers from the disgraced left-wing activist group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as an MRC study revealed. SPLC made ugly accusations against Raichik, Miller and Posobiec, calling them “extremists,” “white supremacists” and “bigots.” Google search promoted the accusations both by directly linking to SPLC in search results and by linking to other websites that reference SPLC like Wikipedia and the Human Rights Campaign. Google was particularly biased against Orthodox Jew Raichik, citing the SPLC no fewer than seven times either directly or indirectly in search results.
Nextdoor suspended a user for his daily scriptural posts. Mark Fly shared a screenshot on X Oct. 11 explaining that the social media platform Nextdoor suspended him over his daily messages, which were often inspired by or included Bible verses. One of the messages Nextdoor cited in its censorship notice read, “Do you know the Lord? Do your friends, family and others know that you do? Do you declare He is your Lord and Saviour? Do you tell them His name is above all names? What if YOU are the only one they will listen to? Tell them. Why? Jesus said.” Another of Fly’s posts asked, “Are you listening to Jesus or the devil? Do your actions speak for you? Pray against the distractions that pull you away from obedience to His Word.” The third message shown in the screenshot read, “There will be attacks. There will be trials. As you serve the Lord, and are obedient to His Word, know these will not prosper nor prevail! Why? Jesus said.” Nextdoor vaguely asserted that the content “violated the guidelines.”
X censored a British documentary on censorship. A British outlet called “spiked” produced a documentary about the increasing crackdown on free speech by the U.K. government. The documentary, titled “Think Before You Post,” highlighted that “at least 30 people a day are now arrested in England and Wales for social-media posts.” Spiked suggested that the censorship could have resulted from a 2023 U.K. law that recently went into effect, and included age verification rules. The outlet posted the documentary on its X account, but the platform imposed a notification labeling the film as “Age-restricted adult content” for users not logged into age-verified accounts. In reference to the documentary, the X notification asserted that “[t]his content might not be appropriate for people under 18 years old. To view this media, you’ll need to log in to X.” Spiked insisted that the documentary “has zero age-inappropriate content in it,” and that one interviewee’s curse word was beeped out.
TikTok censored a show about U.S. government strikes on narco-terrorists. On Oct. 23, Aly Legge, Director of Civic Engagement at Moms for America and co-host of The Homefront and Open Mic, posted on X that she had been censored. “Censored yet AGAIN on TikTok for my @openmicladies LIVE where we discussed and showed a video of our military taking care of Narco terrorists among other truths shared via Video!” she said. “Not sure how any of it is ‘misinformation’ 🤷🏽♀️ . Guess I need a back up account!” Legge included a screenshot of TikTok’s message, which explained that after the censored Oct. 23 show she could not go live again until Oct. 30 because of “Misinformation.” TikTok pronounced, “In a global community, it is natural for people to have different opinions, but we seek to operate on a shared set of facts and reality.”
Free speech is 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.
