PragerU sued Youtube and Google for censoring its videos Monday night, alleging the companies violated its rights by limiting access to some videos.
The conservative nonprofit — which creates educational videos for public viewership — filed its lawsuit Monday night in a San Fransisco federal court, alleging that YouTube has violated its First Amendment rights by censoring some of its videos, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Google/YouTube uses their restricted mode filtering not to protect younger or sensitive viewers from ‘inappropriate’ video content, but as a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU,” the lawsuit says.
“We believe everyone should have a voice. Since our founding, free expression has been one of our core values,” YouTube said in a March blog post, advertising its advocacy for free speech. But “there’s a difference between the free expression that lives on YouTube and the content that brands have told us they want to advertise against,” it added, seeking to make a distinction in order to censor some content.
Since 2016, YouTube has limited access to more than 36 PragerU videos, which also means that potential add revenue from those videos was cut off as well.
“Just as on many college campuses, there has been a refusal to allow conservatives to speak,” said former California governor and PragerU attorney, Pete Wilson, positing that the restrictions on PragerU’s videos is part of effort to limit conservative speech.
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