This week PragerU, a conservative not-for-profit organization founded by Dennis Prager, filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." In an interview with The Daily Wire on Friday, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit underscored the far-reaching free speech implications of her organization's legal action against what has become "two of the most important public forums in the world" and explained why their legal team feels "very strongly" that they can win. ...
In a press release issued Tuesday, PragerU's legal team - which includes Harvard's Alan Dershowitz and former California Governor Pete Wilson and Eric George of Browne George Ross, among several others - laid out the rationale for the lawsuit, which was prompted by Google/YouTube restricting or "demonitizing" over 50 PragerU videos for what YouTube claims is "inappropriate" content for younger audiences.
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Comment: Rather interesting that Google is going this route. What they are essentially arguing is that they are a publisher, not a utility, meaning they can pick and choose what is published on their platforms (as opposed to a utility, like the phone company, who have no say on how their service is used by the public). However, if they're claiming publisher status, this means that they are putting themselves in the position of being responsible for everything that is put onto their platform by users, in the same way that a newspaper would be held responsible for what they publish. It's a rather precarious position to put themselves in and could only make their job as content police more difficult. It also means that the future of YouTube, Google and other social media platforms will likely be more censorious than it currently is.
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