While Americans were celebrating their rights and blessings this Thanksgiving, tech giants were attacking First Amendment rights.
Legacy media and Big Tech have joined forces to manipulate information online. Even as seven in 10 Americans express loss of confidence in elitist media, those very untrustworthy sources are dominating sites like Apple News, AOL, MSN, Google News, and other news aggregators, while right-leaning media is often excluded. Meta and X also continue to censor Americans.
From the online blackout about President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin to to censorship of Scripture and pro-life content, here are the worst cases of censorship from November logged in MRC’s unique CensorTrack database.
Online news aggregator displays extreme leftist bias. For the week of Nov. 8 through 14, MRC found that Apple News did not include any right-leaning news outlets in its top 20 stories each day. While the news aggregator included NPR and The Washington Post, Fox News and New York Post — which are among the most-visited news sites in America — were noticeably missing. The following week, Nov. 15 through 21, Apple News again did not highlight even one right-leaning source, instead promoting 82 articles from left-leaning news sites and suppressing many more popular news outlets.
News aggregators blackout reporting on President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin. Big Tech hid the truth even as new reporting from the New York Post’s Miranda Devine exposed shocking information about Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks. Devine’s reporting revealed threats made by Crooks, his ties to neo-Nazis and the furry and transgender online communities, and that then-FBI Director Christopher Wray deceived Congress about Crooks’s online presence. MRC Free Speech America found that, out of the nearly 1,000 stories promoted by Google News, Yahoo News, Apple News, MSN, MSN News and AOL, not a single article covered Devine’s Crooks-FBI exposé between Nov. 17 to Nov. 24, This is particularly condemnable given Crooks tried to assassinate the man who is now president of the United States and that his Trump assassination attempt was followed by another and then the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Meta censors pro-life video condemning the celebration of abortion. Live Action founder and president Lila Rose shared a video on Facebook and Instagram of her reaction to a clip of a woman celebrating her planned abortion. Rose’s video included an animation of what happens during an abortion and graphic images of aborted fetal remains. Meta imposed a “sensitive content” filter on the video on Facebook Stories and Instagram Reels. Strangely, Meta did not impose the same filter on Rose’s main Facebook page post of the video.
X suspends user posting a Bible verse. X user beccaham22222 shared on X that the platform had suspended her account when she quoted a Bible verse. “I appealed it and won, I threatened to SUE over freedom of speech.” She included a screenshot showing the appeal notice and her Nov. 24 post: “@DefiantLs Whoa [sic] be to those who turn these little ones astray. It is better that a millstone be hung about their necks and be cast into the sea [Luke 17:2].” The screenshot indicates that she could not access her account while the appeal process was ongoing, but does not explain reveal X’s reason or the suspension.
X limits visibility for user’s comment about violent antisemitism. X user @natalie_Zion_ shared that she had been censored in a Nov. 10 X post. “I can't believe even the @X appeal was turned down. Apparently its [sic] hatred to talk about antisemitism as a Jew these days. @elonmusk WTF is going on? This is why I'm so shadow banned.” The user included a screenshot of X’s notification message claiming she “Violat[ed] our rules against hateful conduct”. In the censored post, the user wrote “@Matt_Pinner As a jew…….run to my garden, dig a massive bunker, gather food and hide because during this climate I’ll end up in a gas chamber.”
