Tech companies have only one rule about censorship: don’t talk about censorship.
Project Veritas, a conservative investigative group, just had its video exposing censorship at Pinterest removed from YouTube. James O’Keefe, Veritas’ founder, tweeted that the video was taken down from the platform on June 12. YouTube claimed that a privacy complaint caused the video to be flagged and then deleted.
Veritas stated on Twitter, “If using people's names and faces in an investigative report warrants a ‘privacy complaint,’ we fear the future of journalism in this country. @YouTube needs to look up journalism in the dictionary.”
YouTube gave Veritas 48 hours to delete the video, then removed it completely, even though the email merely warned of a potential “restriction.”
In a statement to Breitbart, YouTube responded, “The privacy of our users is important to us, that’s why we created robust privacy guidelines. If someone feels their privacy has been violated on YouTube, they can file a privacy complaint and we will promptly remove the content if it violates our guidelines.”
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Veritas also had its Twitter account restricted for tweeting about the story. The account received a suspension for its tweet that noted that Pinterest had restricted content about conservative figure Ben Shapiro and had labeled him a “white supremacist.”
Project Veritas released an exposé on Pinterest on June 11 detailing the ban of pro-life content, its’ subsequent classification as “pornography,” and the targeting of Christian and conservative content on Pinterest. The category “Christian” was banned from Pinterest’s search bar, while the pro-life group LiveAction was banned and de-platformed from Pinterest completely.
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