Google Censors John Stossel’s YouTube Video on Socialism

In a recent op-ed, Fox Business pundit and author John Stossel discussed the documentary The Creepy Line which explores the censorship by tech giants such as Google. Stossel has had his own brush with Google’s “creepy line” when he attempted to publish a video about socialism on YouTube, which prevented young people from being able to view it.

In an article published in TownHall.com, Fox Business pundit John Stossel discusses his experience attempting to publish videos critical of socialism via YouTube and what he learned from the documentary The Creepy Line about how tech giants view privacy matters.

In his article, Stossel outlines his experience when attempting to publish a video about the effects of socialism on the country of Venezuela, which was subsequently removed from YouTube:

This morning Google told me that it would not allow my YouTube video “Socialism Leads to Violence” to be viewed by young people. It violates “community guidelines,” said the company in a computer-generated email.

Anti-capitalist bias? Or just an algorithm shielding children from disturbing violence in Venezuela? I don’t know.

But a new documentary, “The Creepy Line,” argues that companies like Google and Facebook lean left and have power they shouldn’t have.

The title “Creepy Line” refers to a comment by former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who said when it comes to issues like privacy, Google policy “is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it.”

But the documentary argues that Google crosses that creepy line every day.

Google’s power comes from its dominant search engine. We assume that whatever appears at the top of our searches is the “best” or most popular result.

But is it?

Stossel then discusses his conversation with Peter Schweizer, the writer of The Creepy Line:

“It is a company that has an agenda,” the writer of “The Creepy Line,” Peter Schweizer, says in my latest video.

Google executives do give much more money to Democrats than Republicans. Eric Schmidt even advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Their ability to manipulate the algorithm is something that they’ve demonstrated,” says Schweizer, and last election Google put positive stories about Hillary Clinton higher in Google searches.

 

Stossel discussed the problem with one company having so much power over the content seen by millions of people:

My purpose in making the videos is to reach kids, to educate them about the benefits of free markets. It’s why I started StosselInTheClassroom.org, a nonprofit that provides videos, plus teachers’ guides, free to teachers.

If Google and Facebook decide adults should be “protected” from seeing those videos, too, then “Stossel TV” will go dark.

As Peterson says in the documentary, “Whatever the assumptions are that Google operates under are going to be the filters that determine how the world is simplified and presented.”

Read the full op-ed at TownHall.com here.