Associated Press Targets ‘Extremist’ Podcasts for Deplatforming

The Associated Press is targeting tech companies that host decentralized podcast marketplaces, including Apple and Google, alleging that they host “extremist” content — and the AP includes President Trump’s statements under that umbrella term.

The AP says “white supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists” are using podcasts to propagate their views, while describing President Trump’s arguments regarding election fraud as “extremist.”

Podcasts made available by the two Big Tech companies let you tune into the world of the QAnon conspiracy theory, wallow in President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and bask in other extremism. Accounts that have been banned on social media for election misinformation, threatening or bullying, and breaking other rules also still live on as podcasts available on the tech giants’ platforms.

AP lumps in QAnon with white supremacists, quoting the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that moved to the far left under the leadership of former Obama official Jonathan Greenblatt.

Podcasting “plays a particularly outsized role” in propagating white supremacy, said a 2018 report from the Anti-Defamation League. Many white supremacists, like QAnon adherents, support Trump. Podcasting’s an intimate, humanizing mode of communication that lets extremists expound on their ideas for hours at a time, said Oren Segal of ADL’s Center on Extremism.

Far from de-escalating their blacklisting pressure campaign in the wake of President Trump’s ban from major social media platforms, the mainstream media appears to have moved on to other targets.

In addition to the AP’s targeting of podcasts, CNN is pressuring cable companies to justify hosting conservative networks like Newsmax and One America News (OAN).

The far-left network also gave a platform to Alex Stamos, a former Facebook executive who called for independent news providers to be suppressed on social media platforms because “There are people on YouTube for example that have a larger audience than daytime CNN.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.