YouTube has deleted a video of former President Donald Trump from the account belonging to the American Conservative Union and froze their account — preventing them from streaming his CPAC speech on Sunday.
The video that was removed, as well as Trump's speech, focused heavily on Big Tech censorship.
"The American Conservative Union (ACU) has learned that a recent episode of its 'America UnCanceled' program on the CPAC NOW network has been removed by YouTube," the ACU said in a statement. "The episode featured coverage of former President Donald Trump’s major class-action lawsuit against Big Tech, led by America First Policy Institute. ACU is a plaintiff to the lawsuit."
ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said that he believes their account was censored because they are supporting Trump's lawsuit.
“It is clear that YouTube censored CPAC because we stood with former President Donald Trump on his lawsuit against Big Tech,” said Schlapp.“This is yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor.”
During the censored speech, Trump said that Big Tech censorship is "unconstitutional" and "unlawful."
"The Radical Left and Big Tech's attack on free speech is unlawful, it's unconstitutional and it is completely un-American. To protect the constitutional rights and liberties of every citizen, this week I filed a major class action... lawsuit against the Big Tech giants," Trump said during the censored speech.
The CPAC account is suspended from posting for one week.
In an email to the ACU, YouTube claimed that the organization violated the platform's “medical misinformation” concerning COVID-19 policy as the reason for removing the video of Trump. "YouTube did not specify any statements made in the video that allegedly violated their policies," according to the organization.
The ACU statement said that they believe YouTube "was offended by sound medical research conducted by the Smith Center for Infectious Diseases & Urban Health and Saint Barnabas Medical Center. Former President Donald Trump referenced the study in the video that YouTube removed, saying, 'doctors and medical groups have been barred from these platforms for posting about therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine…now, most recent studies say [the drug is] effective in combating the virus.'"
"Clearly, Google’s political biases heavily influence YouTube’s definitions of 'misinformation' and that the political beliefs of Google executives take priority over the free speech rights of Google users," the ACU statement concluded.
Timcast has reached out to YouTube for comment and will update this article if one is provided.
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