Study alleges Big Tech platforms censor conservative viewpoints
Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell discusses how censorship on social media platforms is impacting conservative consumers on 'Fox News @ Night.'
The Media Research Center found that "secondhand censorship" is allowing big tech platforms to shield Americans from content that would otherwise come across on social media.
MRC founder Brent Bozell oversees the organization’s Free Speech America CensorTrack database, which tracks the effects of secondhand censorship. It found that seven big tech platforms – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Spotify – kept information from users a staggering 144,301,713 times during the first quarter of 2022 alone.
The study defined secondhand censorship as "the number of times that users on social media had information kept from them" by big tech. The group "calculated the secondhand censorship effect by adding the number of followers each account had at the time of each censorship case recorded during the quarter," according to Brian Bradley and Gabriela Pariseau of Free Speech America.
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TFacebook is among the seven big tech giants accused of secondhand censorship. (AP Photo/The Des Moines Register, Charlie Litchfield)
"The secondhand censorship effect for the first quarter of 2022 includes only the censorship cases we found or were informed about. Because of this, it represents a mere fraction of the total scale of secondhand censorship taking place," Bradley and Pariseau added. "Big Tech’s lack of transparency means that an incalculable amount of censorship – beyond what is shown in this report – takes place every day."
Bozell joined "Fox News @ Night" with Shannon Bream on Wednesday to discuss the findings.
"Social media is the communications vehicle of the future whether we like it or not. The censorship of conservatives and Christians, and most especially conservative Christians, by big tech is a huge problem," Bozell said.
"It is enormous because it is affecting the public square in ways that has never happened in American history. So, how important is this? Those of us who have been looking at censorship have been looking at it from the standpoint of the producers. We’ve logged, we’ve verified about 4,000 cases that are confirmed examples of censorship," he continued. "But we haven’t looked at it from the standpoint of the consumer. What’s the effect of that censorship?"
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The Media Research Center found that "secondhand censorship" is allowing big tech platforms to shield Americans from content that would otherwise come across on social media. (Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
"For the first three months of this year, we looked at 172 cases, just 172 cases of confirmed, verified censorship, we then looked at how many times that information was withheld from the American people through those 172 acts, 140 million times information didn’t reach the American people because of 172 acts of censorship," Bozell said.
Bream then pointed out that many liberals deny censorship is happening, pointing to a poll of Facebook’s top performing posts that indicates conservatives are "doing very well" on the platform as evidence liberals could use to make their case. However, Bozell disagreed with the notion.
"In fact, the worst case came from Facebook," he said. "Facebook has over 80 these instances."
Media Research Center president Brent Bozell asked, "When was the last time you heard a liberal complain about being censored?"
Bozell then said made it clear that he believes this is a partisan issue.
"When was the last time you heard a liberal complain about being censored? It just doesn’t happen. But conservatives across the spectrum are now being censored. Here’s the important thing, that number is minuscule, it just scratches the surface," he said. "We only looked at three months… we didn’t look at people who’ve already been censored… had we looked at cases of censorship before that three-month period, it would have been billons of pieces of information that have never reached the American people because of the censorship."