4 Companies Move to Blacklist Project Veritas in Quick Succession After Big Tech Exposés LUCAS NOLAN 27 Jun 2019
Investigative journalism group Project Veritas has dropped multiple major stories this month on Big tech — here are 5 times Big Tech tried to censor them as a result.
Recently, investigative journalism group Project Veritas has published multiple stories that have hit Silicon Valley tech giants such as Google hard, revealing the company’s lack of respect for Congress and attempts to censor conservative opinions. As a result, Project Veritas has faced multiple attempts at censoring their stories off the Internet. Following a tweet from Project Veritas, Breitbart News has compiled a list of the various ways that Project Veritas has been censored in just the month of June alone.
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) June 26, 2019
1: YouTube Bans Videos About Veritas Investigation Into Pinterest
A recent investigation by Project Veritas revealed that Pinterest added Bible verses to a “sensitive terms” list and censored a major pro-life website as “pornography.” Shortly after this, the Project Veritas’ video featuring testimony from a Pinterest insider was removed from YouTube:
Zitat 🚨🚨 YouTube has REMOVED our Pinterest Insider story 🚨🚨 The battle is on 🚨🚨 SUPPORT the insider who leaked the documents and got fired HERE: https://t.co/FLBzuLE65R pic.twitter.com/zWLfW2leRQ
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 12, 2019
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said in a statement: “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?”
2: Twitter Suspends Project Veritas Account Over Pinterest Story
Twitter also didn’t seem to take kindly to Project Veritas revealing information leaked to them by an insider at Pinterest. Following the posting of the Pinterest story to Twitter, Project Veritas saw its account temporarily suspended from the platform:
Zitat Breaking News: Twitter has decided that investigative journalism is in violation of their terms of service – @Project_Veritas has been temporarily suspended from posting for tweeting internal communications from @Pinterest which show them calling @benshapiro a "white supremacist" pic.twitter.com/eJNDWEfanf
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 12, 2019
This took place shortly after the removal of the Pinterest story from YouTube, adding further credence to claims that tech firms are colluding to shut down conservatives on their platforms.
3: Reddit Bans Project Veritas
Social media site and self-proclaimed “Front page of the Internet,” Reddit also recently banned Project Veritas’ account after the organization tried to post a link to their Google insider story.
Zitat Reddit SUSPENDED @Project_Veritas account. We discovered this as we tried to post a link to today's Google insider story. You can see the full report on our website: https://t.co/8DWus8E4ia
Other brave tech insiders can contact us: https://t.co/ilDYVUZpSj pic.twitter.com/Lu5oUU9zoI
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 24, 2019
A few days later, Reddit “quarantined” the Trump-supporting subreddit The_Donald which had over 750,000 subscribers at the time of its quarantining. Users attempting to visit the subreddit are met with a warning page, deterring them from accessing the community. Reddit described its reasoning for censoring the subreddit stating:
There will sometimes be communities that, while not prohibited, average redditors may nevertheless find highly offensive or upsetting. In other cases, communities may be dedicated to promoting hoaxes (yes we used that word) that warrant additional scrutiny, as there are some things that are either verifiable or falsifiable and not seriously up for debate (eg, the Holocaust did happen and the number of people who died is well documented). In these circumstances, Reddit Administrators may apply a quarantine.
4: YouTube Bans Video of Undercover Google Investigation
Some commenters found it unsurprising that Google-owned video hosting platform YouTube would take action to censor the most recent Google investigation by Project Veritas as it could prove very damaging to the company going forward. In the video, Google executive Jen Gennai made multiple damaging comments about the company to undercover Project Veritas investigators, stating: [quotw] We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again.
We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?[/quote] Shortly after Project Veritas published its investigation, along with video footage of Gennai making these comments, Veritas’ videos were removed from YouTube.
Zitat BREAKING: YOUTUBE/GOOGLE HAS REMOVED OUR GOOGLE INVESTIGATION as it was approaching 50K likes and a million views. IMPORTANT: Please download it on @bitchute and repost it. https://t.co/chDsGF0QCk
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 25, 2019
5: Vimeo Follows YouTube’s Lead, Removes Video
And shortly after YouTube’s removal of the video, another hosting platform called Vimeo removed the same video. Vimeo stated that the video was not allowed on its platform as: “You cannot upload videos that are hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory.”
Zitat 🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING @Vimeo has REMOVED Project Veritas saying: "You cannot upload videos that are hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory." Perhaps we embarrassed @Google but NOTHING we said was hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory. They're trying to erase us from the internet. pic.twitter.com/mBfmeHo4i0
— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) June 26, 2019
One of the only platforms still hosting the video — which once again is simply an investigation into Gennai’s comments and footage of her making said comments — is BitChute, a free-speech centered video sharing platform. The full video can be watched on BitChute here.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has also uploaded the Project Veritas to his YouTube account, as tweeted out by James O’Keefe:
Zitat OK @YouTube. @SenTedCruz has our undercover @google video on HIS channel. You banned our SAME video (approaching 1mil views) for a "privacy complaint." Your move @SusanWojcicki. Will you apply the same standard of censorship to A US SENATOR?@YouTubeInsider https://t.co/jPIHIoAWsm
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 27, 2019
As the 2020 elections draw near and social media once again becomes a political battleground, users should expect to see more of this sort of censorship as the Masters of the Universe attempt to “prevent another Trump situation,” to use Google executive Jen Gennai’s own words. Breitbart News will continue to investigate these Silicon Valley tech firms and will report on the ongoing work by Project Veritas which appears to have greatly angered the tech giants.