Patriots: For over 26 years, your generosity has made it possible to offer The Patriot Post without a subscription fee to military personnel, students, and those with limited means. Please support the 2024 Patriots' Day Campaign today.

October 13, 2016

The Social Media Thought Police

Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have all been censoring conservative content.

Policing thought is, unfortunately, one of the realities of social media. We’ve detailed the censorship and bias of Facebook, but it’s hardly alone. Recently, Twitter suspended University of Tennessee law professor and blogger extraordinaire Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) over a “controversial” tweet about Black Lives Matter protesters. He was restored upon appeal, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. This week, Twitter also suspended the account of conservative activist James O'Keefe. This time, it has to do with guns.

O'Keefe had just captured former Sen. Russ Feingold on camera saying, “Well, there might be an executive order” on gun control. A major Hillary Clinton donor also said, “Hillary wants to shut it down. If we can get guns away from everyone in this country, she’ll close the loopholes, she’ll get rid of assault weapons, she will get rid of being able to buy you know, unlimited bullets, she’s gonna make all that stop.”

Think Twitter didn’t want to suppress that? Ostensibly, this is about photos or videos without the subject’s consent, but O'Keefe has a habit of breaking inconvenient stories.

Meanwhile, YouTube has gotten in on the anti-conservative act. Prager University, which was created by conservative radio host Dennis Prager and offers short educational videos on a variety of topics from a Judeo-Christian perspective, has charged that Google-owned YouTube has been censoring a number of its educational videos by classifying 21 of them as “restricted.” Video titles such as “Are the Police Racist?,” “What ISIS Wants,” “Did Bush Lie About Iraq?” and “What is the University Diversity Scam?” have landed under YouTube’s “restricted mode.”

YouTube will restrict videos if they contain inappropriate or objectionable adult and sexual content. In doing so, the ubiquitous video sharing website is making it particularly difficult for students to gain access to their videos as most schools prevent students from accessing restricted content. Elisha Krauss, director of outreach at PragerU, said, “Based on our review of YouTube’s policies and user guidelines, none of our videos meet the requirements of being inappropriate, sexually explicit, or hate speech.”

For several months PragerU has communicated with YouTube over removing the “restricted mode” status from the videos to no avail. In fact, the number of PragerU videos being restricted has increased. In response, PragerU has created an online petition calling for YouTube to stop censoring its videos with the “restricted mode.” So far the petition has collected over 30,000 signatures.

As Facebook, Twitter and Google illustrate, social media giants are putting a finger on the scale, discriminating against conservative content.

(Updated and revised.)

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.