The unprecedented censorship we are facing is the biggest threat to democracy in our history. Imagine waking up to find that, without any notice, you have been deplatformed and deleted off YouTube; years of your work — poof — gone in an instant. When someone violates someone’s right to speak, they violate your right to listen. This type of digital assassination is enough to make you want to punch Google in the kisser.
Censorship In An Age Of Technofascism
On October 26th, 15 YouTube content creators filed an emergency injunction against Google-owned YouTube. The federal lawsuit, which is being led by Google Whistleblower Zach Vorhies. The lawsuit is being filed by Cris Armenta and Credence Sol of ARMENTA & SOL, and seeking a temporary restraining order to restore the Plaintiffs’ accounts. Vorhies was a software engineer for Google/YouTube for eight and a half years, and both Ms. Armenta and Ms. Sol have experience litigating against Google.
The suit alleges 17 claims for relief, and accuses Google of breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) and violating their First Amendment rights. The courts have now assigned Judge Beth Freeman, an Obama appointee and Berkeley undergrad, to the case.
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The hearing of We The People vs Google was set for the morning of Monday morning, November 2nd. It was open to the public to listen in, but recording is a violation of federal law. Plaintiffs invited the public to listen in.
“YouTube’s massive de-platforming, which occurred on October 15th, just three weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, worked to the severe detriment of both conservative content creators and American voters who seek out their content,” states the complaint. “YouTube took this draconian action so swiftly that the Plaintiffs … received no advance notice and were not able to download their own content.”
Plaintiffs include JustInformed Talk, SGT Report, X22 Report, SpaceShot 76, RedPill78, Edge of Wonder, Praying Medic, Amazing Polly, Woke Societies, Daniel Lee, Deception Byes, InTheMatrixxx, Destroying the Illusion, Sarah Westall, and TruReporting.
The mainstream media, such as compromised outlet Media Matters, which is backed by George Soros, basically put out red herrings in the form of articles painting anyone who speaks about QAnon as violent or conspiratorial.
For instance, Media Matters wrote that YouTube “is regularly used by followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory as a platform to radicalize new members and widely share misinformation.”
These smear pieces then legitimize YouTube to then scrub people off, under the false flag of “safety.”
The Plaintiffs allege that YouTube removed their channels without giving them notice, or without cause under the Terms of Service that YouTube itself drafted and imposed on the Plaintiffs. YouTube, they affirm, also violated the First Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs, and the public they serve through their social commentary, news, and information channels.
“My channel was deleted, much to my surprise,” recalls influencer, Amazing Polly, who started her channel in March 2016 out of Canada. She had 377,000 subscribers and more than 28 million views.
I found out about it when someone I don’t know made a post on Twitter saying something to the effect of ‘Oh no! YouTube deleted Amazing Polly, IPOT, SGT and more of my favorites!! I am so angry!’ When I tried to open my YouTube page, all that showed there was a notice that my channel was gone because, it said, I had committed severe and repeated violations! This is a lie and a smear against my character to which I object but there is no way for me to correct the record. YouTube’s condemnation, written in white letters across a big red bar, now replaces the years worth of work that my viewers used to see when they clicked on my channel name.
Google, a big tech company that arguably has more power in the world than any other, has not only endangered free speech but also ruined organic searches with their auto-suggestions (a mind control tactic) as well as the livelihood of many businesses. They have also arguably compromised the integrity of the elections.
Dr. Robert Epstein, Senior-Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and former editor in chief of Psychology Today, discovered as early as 2012, through years of research, that Google poses three main threats to humanity. These are:
- An obscene level of surveillance across more than 200 platforms
- The power to determine what content over two billion people can or cannot see
- And its systematic and invisible manipulation of information on a massive scale.
He identified at least nine different blacklists and wrote about it in a piece for US News and World Report titled “The New Censorship.” Now they are guilty of what is being dubbed The Purge, when they vaporized a la 1984 a handful of YouTube channels on October 15th.
These are some of the channels deleted as featured on AltCensored:
“I want back what we worked so hard for,” says Plaintiff Thomas of TruReporting. “Years of sacrifice and effort to bring forth truth, all to be stripped from us because those who have done wrong, are afraid of the exposure of being found out,” adds Thomas who had 216K subscribers and 24 million views. He created his channel on January 1st, 2018.
We Are The News Now
It was back on October 9, 2006 that Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. Since then, YouTube has become very important to “understanding things happening around the world,” according to a report by Brandwatch, that states that six out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV.
Together, the Plaintiffs’ news and social commentary channels reached more than 800 million views and more YouTube subscribers than many legacy news channels, such as C‐SPAN, The New York Times, and NBC News.
Interestingly, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., many Americans get their news from independent YouTube channels along the same metrics as legacy or traditional news sources. They conclude that legacy and independent media are thriving side-by-side, and established news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch. Most YouTube news consumers view both legacy and independent news videos on the platform.
This is arguably why the Ministry of Truth and the Thought Police have cracked down on any channels that challenge the public narrative, wrongly positioning these voices as “conspiracy theories” in order to discredit them.
“We are engaged in a digital war,” explains SGT Report, who has been growing his channel for the past decade. He had 640K on one channel and 110k on a back-up channel.
They are trying to destroy us economically and in whatever way possible, and all we are trying to do is support our constitution and bill of rights, and take back our country back via rule of law. We want justice for all.
Yet conveniently, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, gives big tech a “special immunity” from liability that nobody else gets, meaning social media sites can’t be sued. YouTube and Google are expected to defend the case and claim that Section 230 provides them immunity for the actions they took against conservative commentators.
Under the act, crafted by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA), an “interactive computer service” can’t be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content. This protects websites from lawsuits if a user posts something illegal, although there are exceptions for pirated and prostitution-related material. The Section 230 immunities were provided by Congress as a means to give internet providers an ability to remove content that was considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”
With that said, the Ninth Circuit recently issued an opinion, retreating from the broad interpretation of the immunity that social media has used for years to defend lawsuits from its contract partners and users.
“The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found persuasive the notion that the ‘unbounded reading’ of Section 230 previously employed by social media giants such as YouTube would allow a content provider to ‘block content for anticompetitive purposes or merely at its malicious whim,’” explains Armenta.
Although many courts have rejected the notion that YouTube is subject to the First Amendment, concluding that YouTube is a private party, the Complaint alleges that YouTube acted at the behest, and was encouraged by and coerced by Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Adam Schiff.
The Plaintiffs’ attach to the complaint letters that Representative Schiff published on Congressional letterhead, urging that content be removed and replaced in regards to COVID-19. The Plaintiffs also reference the House’s recent action of passing House Resolution 1154, which condemned certain content and specifically mentioned social media.
In direct response to Representative Schiff’s published letter demanding censorship, YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki responded by Tweet: “Thanks for reaching out, we’re working every day to protect people from misinformation and help them find authoritative information.”
Let’s conclude that YouTube takes its directives on health from the World Health Organization (or arguably China), and have said straight up that they do not acknowledge that natural remedies such as Vitamin C can help with the coronavirus.
The Plaintiffs allege that under Supreme Court precedent, if a private party acts when it is encouraged or coerced by the government or its agents, then the state action theory applies and the First Amendment rights should be protected, particularly from viewpoint discrimination.
This lawsuit follows the filing of a massive antitrust action against Google by the Department of Justice and 11 states. The “state action” theory was previously raised by Armenta & Sol, on behalf of an African‐American conservative commentator, Young Pharaoh, in July 2020, also against Google and YouTube. Although the Defendants in that case filed a Motion to Dismiss and oral argument was held, Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi has not yet issued a decision.
PUNCH GOOGLE
In order to file the emergency injunction, Google Whistleblower Zach Vorhies and a small team, including Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig and myself, launched a crowdfunding campaign titled PUNCH GOOGLE, managing to raise $130K in less than nine days.
“The outpouring of support for this lawsuit has been mind blowing,” says Vorhies, who released 950 pages of documents that cover censorship of subjects including free energy, cancer cures, alternative medicine and even specific individuals from the conservative political sphere. “We have really tapped into the anger that the people have against YouTube for their brutal political oppression of conservative voices.”
An in-depth discussion about the legal strategy between him and Armenta can be viewed in the following video.
“We have a great team of Patriots working to help, to get all of the digital soldiers who were terminated, reinstated,” adds Polly. “I pray this lawsuit works. We did nothing wrong. We just spoke our minds with the research we sought out. Whether we win or lose in the end, we are … going to make history.”
As Polly states, this lawsuit against Google/YouTube has the potential to be history-making! “Yes, it is a David and Goliath battle but if any group of people can take on the giant it is the one that Vorhies has put together for this cause.”
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While writing this article, I myself, who had just gotten out of a two-week YouTube jail sentence, was scrubbed off YouTube. An hour after posting a talk about the Rona Regime, mandatory vaccines and medical freedom alongside Del BigTree and Dr. Carrie Madje, YouTube digitally assassinated my own channel without so much as an email.
Maryam Henein is a Canadian-born investigative journalist, activist, functional medicine consultant, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. She directed the documentary Vanishing of the Bees narrated by Ellen Page.