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YouTube Blacklists Dennis Prager
Another Progressive machine decides to limit free speech by denying easy access to the educational videos of Prager University: YouTube.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. YouTube has decided that 21 Prager University videos need to be placed on “restricted mode,” a category meant for inappropriate and objectionable adult and sexual content. The videos all run only five minutes or less.
Dennis Prager filed a formal complain to try to stop this censorship (which YouTube insists is not censorship), but Prager finally felt he had no option but to go public.
The YouTube video series, known as Prager University, has enjoyed wide success and for good reason. In each video, a noted academic, media personality, or other well known person, addresses a particular issue in a practical and straightforward way, usually in five minutes or less.
There is nothing controversial about the videos, certainly nothing that requires an age rating for viewing so it’s very strange that YouTube would restrict them in any way.
YouTube is owned by Google, and PragerU states on its website that “in response to an official complaint we filed, Google specialists defended their restriction of our videos, and said, ‘We don’t censor anyone,’ although they do ‘take into consideration what the intent of the video is’ and ‘what the focus of the video is.’”
There is no excuse for Google and YouTube censoring and restricting any PragerU videos, which are produced “with the sole intent of educating people of all ages about America’s founding values,” the conservative nonprofit states on its website.
Here’s a List of the videos that YouTube has put on restricted mode:
Are The Police Racist?
Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
Why Did America Fight the Korean War?
Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?
What ISIS Wants
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?
Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do
Did Bush Lie About Iraq?
Who NOT to Vote For
Men and the Power of the Visual
Is America Racist?
Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
The Most Important Question About Abortion
Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
Don’t Judge Blacks Differently
What is the University Diversity Scam?
He Wants You
Israel’s Legal Founding
Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?
Just another attack on free speech . . .
Published in Politics
If restricting is not restrictive, I’m not sure what the restriction is…. I saw no censorship what-so-ever when I went to You Tube. If it exists, it’s annoying. I just don’t see it?
“The right answer” is a change of subject from “options.”
Options are petitions, public outcry, calling attention to the close relationship between Google and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and calling attention to the relationship between President Obama and Google when he ordered them into his office to discuss promotion of preferred narratives. They obeyed, which makes them something other than a private company.
Free speech under the First Amendment is meaningless unless we support habits of free speech in civil life, wherever possible.
He is the kindest, nicest and most fair-minded man I’ve ever heard speak. This must be a mistake.
Here’s what it says on Prager’s web site:
I’ve seen 3 or 4 Prager U presentations. They were excellent. Google’s reaction is outrageous. Legitimate, since they are a private company, but outrageous.
Here’s an idea. Start a word-of-mouth movement. Tell your friends to watch Prager U presentations on YouTube, specifically choosing those which have been placed on the restricted list. Make the restricted list a badge of excellence, and a selling point.
Spread the word.
How does it do anything of the sort? A private company can support any cause it wishes. I do not believe for a second they were forced into this role, they joyfully accept it.
Their ridiculous claim of “no censorship here, no siree!” should be laughed at and noted and mocked constantly, as if they were not functioning as a propaganda organ, I certainly agree with you there.
But the owners of the company have the right to be that political mouthpiece if they so choose. Certainly do not give the least bit of credence to their manifest deceptions as to their “impartiality” but do not deny their right to be absolute political hacks if they have chosen to do so. As any privately run organization.
Yet none of this has anything to do with Prager promoting his content. If he wants to promote his content, he needs to go elsewhere. There can be petitions and outrage but in the end staying means the same outcome, under the arbitrary thumb of an organization that has already made it plain they are hostile.
I think he should stay on YouTube rather than allow Google to marginalize him so easily.
Susan,
This is no accident. We are down to the wire in this Presidential election with everything riding on it. Mr. Prager defended Trump. The video was a preconceived attempt to destroy Trump. They thought they could bulldoze him and they were wrong. As Trump comes back up in the polls over the next few days they will be hysterical. This is the article that probably got Mr. Prager this vicious undeserved sanction.
Trump’s Comments: The Latest Left-Wing Hysteria
Dennis needs to fight this and everybody should help.
Regards,
Jim
I said I don’t like Dennis Prager, but I must admit that I liked this video when I came across it just now.
And Prager didn’t even mention the example of Clarence Thomas.
Perhaps.
There are other venues, but if he wants to choose this hill to fight on then correctly identify the target. YouTube is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Alphabet has shareholders, do these shareholders approve of turning their investment into a political organization?
It would be no bad thing if these investors were confronted and questioned as to what they were investing in. Do they support turning this company into a political organ? Yes or no?
Who knows? Shareholders tend to become less relevant in large corporations, where the managers rule on their own behalf as they see fit. This is true in both private and public corporations (ie governments).
I should add that it would be healthier if there were good alternatives to YouTube. There is Vimeo, but it’s a distant second fiddle.
In a regulatory and technological environment like we have, though, it tends to be winner take almost all. This is why some people are against globalism (or why they should be against it). When you have a simple regulatory environment with one set of rules for everybody, there are no niches for those other than the winner.
We’re not going to change that in the short term, or perhaps even ever. So in the meantime, we should muster as much pressure on Google as possible. Use Alinsky tactics; make them live up to their own professed standards.
Re : #13
It’s a lot worse than just depressing, Jim Lakely. I’m shocked and scared.
Leftists are all Stalinists at heart.
The way the SJWs seem to think they’re “sticking it to The Man” makes me laugh. They don’t even realize they are The Man. They control the news media, TV, movies, and publishing. I always tell my daughter that these days, being a counter-culture rebel means being a Conservative. And she is.
Gotta love Texas women! :-)
YouTube may already have relented. When you get to a restricted video you get the following splash screen with some sort of message:
It might be that “video may not be viewed in your county.” The one I suspect Prager’s videos got was something like “The following video has been age restricted. It may contain content some may find objectionable. Please ‘Sign In’ to continue.”
I went into an “Incognito” window, which hides all aspects of your identity. When I searched for the videos, they came up without the restricted warning window.
They did the same thing with a Trump video and now it’s PragerU.
Tomorrow it’s any conservative news outlet YouTube channel or content.
This is a precursor and what to expect from a Hillary Presidency.
Eeyore,
Thanks for the tip.
Regards,
Jim
Craig,
Yah, let’s give away all the US Gov protection of the net. Sure we can trust the UN Global Governance crowd to never to do this kind of thing. NOT!!!
We need a Clinton-free White House for the next four years.
Regards,
Jim
Forget YouTube it’s a private company, they can do what they want. Move PragerU to ricochet and other Conservative or at least less fascistic sites.
This is what happens when you rely on real estate your enemy owns. This is why you have to roll your own solutions. Sorry, but to the people saying “We have to engage the culture in the culture’s grounds”, that’s just foolish. In a sports metaphor, it’s not only always playing at the opposing team’s stadium, it’s also spotting them points every game, and playing with one hand tied behind your back.
We’ve already started developing our own platforms. You’ve got places like Ricochet, and now you have places like Gab that are giving you an alternative to Twitter. The Gab people are already talking about adding other “social” features, like streaming video. We HAVE to. We have no choice. Build our own places and institutions, or forever be at the whims of those that hate us.
I think this generation of Leftists are more in the mold of Jacobins. Which may be even worse. They’re certainly sure of themselves and self-righteous enough.
I kinda changed my mind he should continue the fight against google, but still look for other outlets for the videos.
I agree with the free market principle of voting with your wallet, so to speak, but we must fight censorship.
Setting up an alternative platform just risks creating a silo-like echo chamber while we leave all the Snowflakes to melt into the socialist mush. Do you want Ricochet to end up as a conservative platform with an average age of over 65 like Fox news? Sure build an alternative (anyone remember MySpace?) but divert people there overtime, which is sort of the idea behind Prager U.
Perhaps something changed, but I just Google-searched “YouTube Prager University” and it went straight to the Prager U YouTube channel with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on “Is Islam a Religion of Peace” from 2 days ago with nearly 400K views already. Even Prager U International comes up without obstruction.
Did any of you really see it or is this just a rumor run wild?
OK I very much appreciate the Prager U videos and want to see them available on YouTube so as to have the widest possible viewership. However, the owners of YouTube have every right as a privately owned corporation to restrict content. That doesn’t make it a good business decision, just their inherent right.
So I followed the link to sign the petition to put pressure on YouTube to change their minds on this. I don’t see any way, even clicking around the site, to see/read the actual petition. Now I never sign anything I can’t read and understand first (drives Realtors crazy but I really don’t care). I approve of Prager U’s effort to pressure YouTube but they need to clean this up IMHO.
So, any news or clarification about what’s going on?
Yes it’s horrible and completely consistent but what do we do about it? Google with all it’s pieces is among the most powerful institutions on earth, so of course the left would seek to take it over. That is what they do. What is our remedy? Here we are worrying about a crass comment over a decade ago by our only choice to stop the leftist stampede.