Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Sen. Ron Johnson (R.-Wisc.) has joined an ever-growing list of people, from the political right and left, who have become disenchanted with YouTube’s content moderation practices, particularly those that relate to the discussion of COVID-19.
Unlike the average jaded user, though, Johnson holds a position from which he can apply some meaningful pressure.
Johnson, ranking member on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, wrote directly to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki last week demanding an explanation as to why conservative voices, most notably Johnson’s own, were stamped out over COVID-related content.
“These policies appear to have led to the repeated censorship of me, proceedings before the United States Senate, and news media,” Johnson wrote. He later added, “Your company has suspended me twice for advocating for the early treatment of COVID-19, opposing vaccine mandates for children and workers, and advocating for the vaccine injured.”
It seems Johnson was inspired to write his letter after a Sept. 14, 2022, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) hearing during which Johnson questioned Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer.
During that meeting, and in his letter, Johnson provided a list of times when YouTube flagged or removed videos in which conservatives expressed opinions that ran counter to YouTube’s established set of COVID “facts,” which ultimately proved inaccurate.
Johnson also provided evidence of President Joe Biden sharing information that was scientifically inaccurate — a July 21, 2021 statement in which Biden said vaccinated persons would not “get COVID” and that “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.”
“There is no doubt that these two statements are false,” Johnson wrote to Wojcicki. “I asked Mr. Mohan and the witnesses from the other social media companies whether your companies ever flagged President Biden as a spreader of misinformation. No one even attempted to answer my question.”
As angry as Johnson was to have been censored, his letter was not just about a lack of discourse on the platform.
During the same hearing, Mohan described YouTube as having worked with various medical experts and government agencies to create its COVID policy.
But Johnson shared he was once censored for having shared a chart with only government data on it and, on at least two other occasions, YouTube removed videos that were nothing more than streams of a senate hearing.
.@Twitter’s “COVID misinformation policy only looked at information that was demonstrably and widely believed” to be false – testified a Twitter executive last week.
Then why, @paraga, was my chart with government data about COVID-19 censored? https://t.co/wYnL4Q4kuH pic.twitter.com/dE9sCWBpAU— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) September 23, 2022
These occurrences and more have made the senator question (both rhetorically and literally) just who comprised the group of experts to whom YouTube spoke and how, if truth and evidence were the primary goals, innocuous content was removed.
To that end, Johnson has requested that Wojcicki provide the names of government officials and agencies with which YouTubue cooperated as well as information relating to Johnson’s own YouTube suspensions.