American Conservative Union: YouTube Canceled CPAC Live Stream

By Sandy Fitzgerald(NEWSMAX

The American Conservative Union says YouTube effectively canceled its ability to live stream former President Donald Trump’s Sunday speech or any of the rest of the organization’s “America UnCanceled” Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend because it had posted a video Friday showing Trump announcing his class-action lawsuit against Big Tech.

“It is clear that YouTube censored CPAC because we stood with former President Donald Trump on his lawsuit against Big Tech,” ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said in a statement.

“This is yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor.”

The ACU says it learned its account was frozen for seven days after it aired the Trump announcement detailing the lawsuits he filed against Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, which is YouTube’s parent company, as well as the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter, reports The Washington Times.

According to the ACU, YouTube informed it in a note that it removed the July 9 episode of its America UnCanceled program for “medical misinformation” and had issued the week-long ban.

In its statement, ACU said that it believes “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.'”

By blocking the CPAC live stream, “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 concluded in its statement.

Last week, the organization announced it is joining with several other organizations in the class-action lawsuit.

“It is my honor to stand alongside President Trump and the brave citizens from across the country who had the courage to stand up to Big Tech, even though they have little power, except for their rights enshrined in the Constitution, including the First Amendment, which is the birthright of every American,” said Schlapp. “This lawsuit will break the stranglehold Big Tech has over our freedom to speak.”

The organization also says Google removed videos of Trump’s speech from the CPAC event held in February.

“Prior to the videos of President Donald Trump’s CPAC 2021 speech being removed by Google, they had received 31 million views on Google’s YouTube platform,” the ACU said. “YouTube representatives told ACU that the speech was removed because ACU did not offer context on what YouTube determined to be ‘election disinformation.'”