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YouTube has censored and suppressed my report on the events of January 6th. I'd like to know why, but Google doesn't owe me an answer. They can promote or suppress whatever they please.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Paul Jay; welcome to theAnalysis.news.
YouTube has censored and suppressed my report on the events of January 6th. I'd like to know why, but apparently Google doesn't owe me an answer. They can promote or suppress whatever they please.
I am an experienced journalist and filmmaker. My documentary work has appeared on major television networks around the world. For ten years, I was the Executive Producer of Counterspin, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news channel's primetime daily debate program. I am the creator and host of theAnalysis.news, distributed on YouTube and its website.
I posted a video on YouTube on February 7th titled, "A Failed Coup Inside a Failed Coup." According to an email I received from YouTube, it violated their policies. How? "Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S presidential election is not allowed on YouTube."
In fact, the video said the opposite of that. The report's central theme was that the events of January 6th were the final act of a failed military coup attempted by Trump after his false claims of fraud failed in the courts. All the sources in my report were from mainstream news outlets, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time Magazine. The video did include clips of Trump's speech on January 6th, where he claimed the election was stolen from him, but that was clearly to illustrate his role in inciting the crowd. I appealed the takedown to Google, so far there's been no reply.
Thinking that the Trump clips had triggered an algorithm looking for content calling the elections a fraud, I posted a new version of the story without any clips from Trump's speech. This video was titled "Trump's Treason and McConnell's Mayhem." This story included evidence that Majority Leader Mitch McConnel knew the mob's intentions and did not take measures to secure the Capitol buildings properly. YouTube has allowed this video to remain on the site, but when I tried to promote the video with Google Ads, my entire Google Ads account was suspended. Google policy states that a suspension takes place when there is an egregious violation of YouTube policy. What is an egregious violation? According to Google, "an egregious violation of the Google Ads policies is a violation so serious that it is unlawful or poses significant harm to our users or our digital advertising ecosystem." Further down, it says, "Given that egregious violations will result in immediate account suspension, upon detection and without prior warning, we limit these to cases when such action is the only effective method to adequately prevent illegal activity and/or significant user harm." I've appealed this action to Google as well, and that appeal has now been reviewed and turned down. I've been banned from all Google advertising forever.
I don't know how my report causes such "user harm" unless the users are Trump, McConnell, and the corporate elites who would like the attempted coup covered up.
Why did Google do this? That's the thing; Google doesn't have to justify its decision at all, so I don't know. They are a private company; they can do as they please. Whether this censorship is the result of a crazy algorithm or a just as crazy human decision, this is the shape of things to come . . . censorship by monopolies of the only public platforms available for independent journalism. In the name of suppressing Trump's ravings, these monopolies will suppress anything that they find objectionable. It's past time that YouTube and other such platforms are treated as public utilities with a democratic code of operation and publicly accountable supervision. The kind of censorship we are seeing here is just the tip of the iceberg of what's coming.
The other big question is, why isn't the attempted coup getting more attention in the news? Everything I reference in my piece is taken from major news organizations, published before January 6th. There isn't a heck of a lot about the coup after January 6th.
Is it perhaps because the coup attempt came closer to reality than I thought? Would investigating the coup attempt risk exposing a threat to civilian rule and the law that goes beyond a crazy Trump scheme?
There is serious support for Trump in the rank and file and officers of the military. Many soldiers are members or supporters of some of the extremist groups that stormed the Hill. Here's a quote from Admiral Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO, in a piece for Time Magazine, "As the massive and ongoing FBI investigation has shown, veterans (and most shockingly, some active duty) members of the armed services were deeply involved at a level well above their numbers in the general population. Active duty and veterans make up about 7% of the U.S. population, and so far about 14% of the targets of the investigation arrested and charged have a military background." The Admiral continues, "As banal as it seems, recruits should be carefully scrutinized for gang tattoos, especially those associated with Nazi and white supremacy groups." "Once people are part of the service, our leadership must be ruthless in discipling and expelling those who drift in this direction."
There has also been reporting on the extent of support for far-right evangelical and far-right Catholic religious movements both at the rank and file and amongst the highest leadership level. These forces are part of a rising fascism that goes far beyond Trump.
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