Media Research Center (MRC) tracked the impact of censorship by social media companies during the first quarter of 2022 and determined that social media users had information kept from them over 144 million times.
MRC's CensorTrack says it has logged more than 4,000 cases of Big Tech censorship through its study The Secondhand Censorship Effect: The Real Impact of Big Tech's Thought-Policing.
The organization defines secondhand censorship as the number of times users on social media had information kept from them.
"America is increasingly outraged by the manner in which radical Big Tech leftists are censoring conservative and Christian leaders and organizations on nearly every major social media platform," MRC said in the study's executive summary. "But what is the secondhand effect of this censorship on consumers – the American people? How much information is being kept from the average social media user?"
MRC, a registered 501(c)(3), used seven platforms — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Spotify — to determine the effect of secondhand censorship.
They determined that the platforms that censored the most were Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Twitter already up to its feathers in lawsuits now inviting more trouble by banning a global organization just two days ahead of key event. The federal lawsuit should reveal what govt agencies are behind the Twitter censorship. Ironically he may need sweet IVY if PAX fails. pic.twitter.com/tSmaC8SNR6
— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) July 21, 2022
According to MRC, censorship impacted Facebook users 86,764,526 times, YouTube users 23,543,230 times, and Twitter users 17,065,054 times during the first quarter of 2022.
The topics that were censored the most were: the war in Ukraine, race, transgenderism, COVID-19, and abortion.
"Social media is the communications vehicle of the future whether we like it or not. The censorship of conservatives and Christians, and most especially conservative Christians, by big tech is a huge problem," MRC founder Brent Bozell told Fox News.
"It is enormous because it is affecting the public square in ways that has never happened in American history. So, how important is this? Those of us who have been looking at censorship have been looking at it from the standpoint of the producers," he mentioned. "But we haven’t looked at it from the standpoint of the consumer. What’s the effect of that censorship?"
"For the first three months of this year, we looked at 172 cases, just 172 cases of confirmed, verified censorship, we then looked at how many times that information was withheld from the American people through those 172 acts, 140 million times information didn’t reach the American people because of 172 acts of censorship," Bozell said.
The report comes the same week United States senators call for legislation to rein in Big Tech companies.
"We must pass legislation to put rules of the road in place for dominant tech companies," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). "These platforms use their dominance to unfairly disadvantage their rivals, all at the expense of competition and consumers."
MRC believes that social media censorship stunts political discourse and has contributed to global division.
