(LifeSiteNews) – Google-owned YouTube announced Wednesday a new policy against videos that promote vaccine “misinformation.”
“We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general,” YouTube announced in a blog post, “and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines.” The Big Tech company boasted that it had removed 130,000 videos in just the past year for violating its “COVID-19 vaccine policies.”
The prohibition applies to “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.”
The censorship will also extend to “content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them,” YouTube said. “Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines.”
YouTube has already brought the hammer down on a number of commentators familiar to LifeSite readers, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Sheri Tenpenny.
“The platform is also banning prominent anti-vaccine accounts, including Joseph Mercola’s channel and the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-linked Children’s Health Defense Fund,” tech website The Verge reported on Wednesday.
Mercola responded to the ban in a statement on his website.
“The world is becoming increasingly aware of the rampant corruption in the media and are rising up against tyrannical governments and the pharmaceutical industry that are coordinating this assault on our freedom and civil rights,” Dr. Mercola wrote. “Anyone who asks questions or challenges the hard sell is immediately censored on social media.”
“Independent media platforms that defend freedom of speech and the rights of Americans to speak out against the global tyranny will defeat the censorship extremists,” he said.
It did not take even a full day for YouTube to censor a commentator just for sharing comments made by someone else.
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles announced on his show today that YouTube removed his entire episode from Wednesday because he discussed NBA players who shared why they did not want to get jabbed. The conservative media company had to edit and then reupload the episode without the segment on the basketball players.
He said that he was accused of violating the policy against posting information that claims COVID vaccines are not effective in stopping transmission.
But as Knowles pointed out, Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control has said this before.
“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN host Wolf Blitzer on August 5. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death — they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
This is still the position of the CDC, according to a September 15 “Science Brief” that summarizes the latest research and views of the agency. “Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed,” the post said.
Liberal law prof.: this is ‘corporate censorship’
A liberal law professor analyzed the situation and said that YouTube is being pushed to censor content that the federal government cannot legally silence on its own. The U.S. Surgeon General previously released a guide on how to stop “the urgent threat of health misinformation.”
“YouTube continued the expansion of corporate censorship on the Internet with the encouragement of leading Democratic leaders,” George Washington University law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote.
He gave several examples of U.S. Senators urging tech companies to silence conservative and contrarian views.
“This is the face of censorship. As demanded, the companies are now sanitizing their sites to remove opposing views on these subjects,” Turley argued. “Rather than offer a free forum for the full debate on such issues, anti-free speech advocates have again prevailed in silencing those with opposing views.”