Musician John Ondrasik, also known by his stage name Five for Fighting, slammed YouTube for reportedly temporarily censoring his music video about Biden’s incompetence in the Afghanistan troop withdrawal.
Biden mishandled the end of America’s longest war so badly that Big Tech is haphazardly handling criticism of the president. “Ondrasik spoke out against censorship on Monday during an appearance on ’America’s Newsroom’ after YouTube temporarily removed and then reinstated a music video of his song ‘Blood on my Hands,’ which criticized the U.S. for its handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal,” Fox News reported Jan. 10. Ondrasik criticised Big Tech leaders for not removing content quickly, even though YouTube restored the video.
Ondrasik explained to America’s Newsroom co-host Dana Perino that concern over free speech has become a value Americans only protect selectively rather than universally. Ondrasik observed, “This YouTube problem, umm. It seems freedom of expression only matters when censorship applies our side. Our tribal team.” “If it’s criticizing some, somebody that is on our side, ‘Well, so what?’ Censorship, it’s all political.”
Ondrasik explained that when the video was originally released, YouTube placed a warning to prevent children from watching it, but removed the video altogether when it started to gain popularity: “Only when the video started to resonate did they take it down and said they had issues with some of the images, and within two minutes I Googled probably twelve YouTube videos that had Taliban atrocities much worse than mine.”
He then explained that while YouTube restored the video, “They did put it back up, which they should have done, but you know, without national outcry, we’d probably be sitting here with nobody seeing it.”
Ondrasik even called out YouTube directlyTweet a screenshot from YouTube of the notification he shared with us. TeamYouTube replied: “Following up: this was our mistake & we’ve reinstated your video. So sorry this happened and thanks for being patient while we worked this out.”
YouTube removing Ondrasik’s video before reinstating it, and then claiming it was a mere error is not an anomaly. Big Tech is suspiciously familiar with the practice of censoring individuals before re-instating them following public outcry.
Facebook banned content as mildly as books for children about American icons. The ban was even rejected by an appeal before higher-ranking leaders declared that it had been a mistake. The truth of whether there was a mistake, dispute between workforce and leadership or an aversion to public outcry is still unclear.
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