PragerU: Tech Giants Turning into ‘Authoritarian Tyrants’

PragerU has released a statement on its plans to further battle Google’s censorship of its content.

In a statement published on its website, PragerU announced that it has filed an appeal of its lawsuit against Google over alleged censorship of their content on Google-owned video streaming website YouTube. PragerU, which was founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager and produces short, graphics-based videos relating to conservatism, has recently claimed that “Google/YouTube uses their restricted mode filtering not to protect younger or sensitive viewers from ‘inappropriate’ video content, but as a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU.”

PragerU’s statement details its plans to challenge Google and YouTube further: “On Monday, the law firm of Browne George Ross LLP, attorneys for PragerU, officially filed an appeal of its lawsuit against Google Inc. and its subsidiary YouTube, LLC. with the Ninth Circuit Court,” reads the statement. “With the filing, PragerU appeals a March 28, 2018 Federal Court ruling by Judge Lucy H. Koh and is instead taking its case directly to the Ninth Circuit Court.”

PragerU CEO Marissa Streit provided an exclusive comment to Breitbart News stating:

There’s been a lot of outrage in our culture and while I’m the last person to advocate for even more hysteria, this is one issue that should unite all Americans, on either side of the political spectrum, in our collective outrage over internet censorship. We cannot allow companies like Google/YouTube to operate as authoritarian tyrants who control the flow of information in a time in history we call the information age. If we do, the information age will become a dark age, and what we currently understand as freedom of speech will become distorted and twisted until it isn’t really free speech at all. We risk losing this uniquely American heritage, which is really the foundation of our democracy.

Streit added in PragerU’s statement:

From the beginning of this process, we’ve been prepared to pursue our lawsuit against Google/YouTube as far, and for as long as it takes to secure every Americans’ right to freedom of speech and expression online. Unfortunately, case law related to internet issues of various kinds, including freedom of speech, is woefully inadequate or completely non-existent. It is incumbent upon organizations like PragerU and other concerned groups and citizens all across the country, to challenge big tech in the court of law in order to establish the legal precedents necessary to protect this sacred right for generations of Americans to come. The time is now for the courts to address this glaring hole in case law and to hold big tech accountable for trying to tell us what is acceptable to think, say, or watch. We are increasingly optimistic about the merits of our lawsuit and we look forward to arguing our case before the Ninth Circuit court of appeals.

The full statement from the PragerU website additionally says: “PragerU v. Google/YouTube, has placed the educational media organization at the center of a heated national debate about freedom of speech online, and carries with it profound implications for both the future of the First Amendment and more generally, political debate in America. Many of PragerU’s videos remain restricted in schools, libraries and homes, disproportionately blocking them from the very audience it hopes to reach, namely young people, who account for more than 60 percent of PragerU’s 1.28 billion online views to date.”

PragerU has also created a petition to call on YouTube to stop censoring conservatives on its platform. The petition has garnered almost 500,000 signatures at the time of the writing of this article. PragerU stated: “Nearly a half million grassroots supporters have added their names to PragerU’s online petition and thousands more have donated in support of the organization’s legal fund.”