YouTube has removed a video which details how Pinterest actively suppressed conservative viewpoints on its website, sparking accusations that the Silicon Valley tech giants are working in concert to silence speech they don’t like.
Created by Project Veritas, the offending video cites internal documents showing that Pinterest designated phrases such as “Bible verses” and “Christian Easter” as “sensitive terms” and placed an influential pro-life website on a pornography blacklist. The group, Live Action, was permanently banned from Pinterest for spreading “conspiracy theories” on the same day that the Project Veritas investigation went public.
The report, which featured an interview with a Pinterest employee who blew the whistle on the troubling thought-policing, was swiftly removed by YouTube, apparently due to a privacy claim by a “third party.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe denounced YouTube’s decision in a statement posted on Twitter.
“The established media and technology are so afraid of investigative journalism they need to censor it. YouTube calls REPORTING on someone by showing their face and name, and how they added a pro-life group to a porn blacklist, a ‘privacy complaint.’ Would they do this to NYT?” he wrote.
The incident has been denounced by those on the left and right.
“Unbelievable. @Youtube is now deleting content it doesn’t want people to see. Sounds pretty Orwellian to us,” tweeted conservative group PragerU.