Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is challenging President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination, and there are certain powers that be among Big Tech and the political establishment that are greatly displeased with that development, which has led some to take action to discredit Kennedy and halt the traction he has gained with a substantial portion of voters.
One recent example of such is YouTube's decision to censor and take down an interview Kennedy did with a former New York Post reporter named Al Guart, Fox News reported.
Though it is unclear exactly why Kennedy's interview was taken down, as YouTube's parent company Google isn't saying, it is suspected that it has to do with the video-sharing platform's policy against vaccine misinformation, which was cited as a reason for the censorship of another Kennedy interview little more than a week earlier.
".@YouTube just pulled another of my videos, with former NY Post political reporter @al_guart," Kennedy wrote Tuesday in a multi-tweet thread. "People made a big deal about Russia supposedly manipulating internet information to influence a Presidential election. Shouldn’t we be worried when giant tech corporations do the same?"
"When industry and government are so closely linked, there is little difference between 'private' and 'government' censorship," he continued. "Suppression of free speech is not suddenly OK when it is contracted out to the private corporations that control the public square."
Kennedy noted, "The Twitter Files proved that numerous government agencies, acting through the FBI, told Twitter whom to censor. Twitter complied. Doubtless, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest received similar requests."
"In the case of my interview with @al_guart, @YouTube probably acted on its own initiative. It has internalized the political wishes of the establishment to the point where it knows what to censor without being told," he added as he also pointed out that the interview remained uncensored on Spotify.
Fox News further reported that it was less than two weeks ago that YouTube had similarly removed an interview between Kennedy and podcaster Jordan Peterson, which prompted an outcry from both men about the apparent censorship of their viewpoints.
In that particular instance, however, a spokesperson for Google responded to a request for comment and said that YouTube had "removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities."
In confirming that YouTube had censored Kennedy and Peterson, the spokesperson said, "Under our general vaccine misinformation policies, we remove false claims about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the [World Health Organization]."
"This includes content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed," they continued. "This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them."
"Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines," the spokesperson added. "Content that would otherwise violate our Community Guidelines may stay on YouTube when it has Educational, Documentary, Scientific, or Artistic (EDSA) context, such as providing countervailing views to the remarks that violate our policies."
That prior admission from Google is noteworthy in that it indicates that YouTube and its parent company have apparently designated themselves as the sole arbiters of what is right and true and granted themselves the authority to censor and silence any views that don't fully comport with their own -- such as Kennedy's well-known skepticism for the "official" narratives on vaccine efficacy and side effects.
That is flatly unacceptable, whether done by a private corporation or the government, as Kennedy aptly noted, and hopefully, his bringing the situation to light will prompt enough of a backlash for Google's YouTube, and other Big Tech-controlled social platforms, to refrain from imposing their heavy-handed censorship on those who hold differing or non-mainstream opinions.
