Google suspended the YouTube account of conservative think tank American Principles Project (APP) on Monday, president Terry Schilling told the Daily Caller.
“At 6:30am, American Principles Project received an email from YouTube notifying us that our page was shut down. They failed to give us any reason why whatsoever. Just that we had either ‘severe or repeated violations’ of their community guidelines,” Schilling said.
Schilling tweeted a screenshot of the email YouTube sent APP noting the ban. YouTube did not explain which guidelines APP broke but did offer Schilling the opportunity to appeal his suspension.
— Terry Schilling 🇺🇸 (@Schilling1776) October 11, 2021
“APP is the premier political organization for families in America, having spent $6 million in the 2020 election cycle alone. This far surpasses any other pro-family group political spending by far. Is it because we believe Big Pharma and the medical community are profiting off of transgender people? Is it because we oppose critical race theory in schools? Perhaps it’s simpler than that—maybe it is because we support Big Tech reform and have opposed Google’s previous efforts to censor conservatives? This is unacceptable and APP will be considering and pursuing all legal options available to us,” Schilling added.
An account associated with the American Principles Project’s political action committee, American Principles Project PAC, has not been removed by Google.
“We enforce our Terms of Service equally for everyone, and terminated the American Principles Project (APP) channel for reuploading content from a previously terminated channel. Upon review of their appeal, we have reinstated the APP channel and issued a warning to the channel, in accordance with our three-strikes system. We’re working with APP to explain our policies so they can make the best decisions for their channel moving forward,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told the Daily Caller.
A YouTube spokesperson further clarified that the APP channel re-uploaded content from Steve Bannon’ War Room channel, which the company permanently banned on Jan. 8 in the wake of the Capitol riot.
YouTube has repeatedly suspended prominent conservatives in recent months. Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul received a seven-day ban in August after he claimed in a video that cloth and store-bought masks do not stop the spread of COVID-19. YouTube claimed that his video violated their COVID-19 “misinformation” rules. (RELATED: James O’Keefe And Project Veritas Suspended From Twitter, Forced To Delete Tweets)
Sky News Australia, also a conservative media outlet, received a seven-day suspension in August over COVID-19 “misinformation.” The videos that led YouTube to temporarily suspend the account were more than a year old at the time of the suspension.