Protecting the President: Big Tech Censors Biden Criticism 646 Times Over Two YearsJoseph Vazquez and Gabriela Pariseau
April 21, 2022
Big Tech’s campaign to protect President Joe Biden and his agenda has continued unabated. The Media Research Center found more than 640 examples of bans, deleted content and other speech restrictions placed on those who criticized Biden on social media over the past two years. This included 140 cases of Big Tech censoring people over the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden story in late 2020.
MRC Free Speech America tallied 646 cases in its CensorTrack database of pro-Biden censorship between March 10, 2020, and March 10, 2022. The tally included cases from Biden’s presidential candidacy to the present day.
The worst cases of censorship involved platforms targeting anyone who dared to speak about any subject related to the New York Post bombshell Hunter Biden story. The Post investigated Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s allegedly corrupt foreign business dealings. Big Tech’s cancellation of that story helped shift the 2020 election in Biden’s favor. Twitter locked the Post’s account for 17 days. In addition, Twitter slapped a “warning label” on the GOP House Judiciary Committee’s website for linking to the Post story.
Big Tech even axed those who blamed the current inflation crisis on Biden. For example, Facebook censored Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, on March 15, simply for posting a video quoting Biden’s embarrassing statements on energy policy. Facebook placed an interstitial, or filter, over Heritage Action’s video, suppressing the post’s reach. The video showed Biden and officials in his administration explaining how his policies would cause gas prices to rise.
But the largest category by far included users who dared to call out Biden's notoriously creepy, touchy-feely behavior around women and children. The 232 cases of comedic memes, videos, or generic posts about Biden’s conduct composed more than one-third of CensorTrack's total instances of users censored for criticizing the president.
In one case, a user reported that Facebook deleted a post that showed three photos of Biden kissing what is reportedly his granddaughter on the lips. It followed with a caption that said: "Find someone who kisses you the way Joe Biden kisses his granddaughter." Snapshots indicated that Facebook claimed the post violated its community standards on “nudity or sexual activity.”
Big Tech even went after posts that quoted Biden’s own words and made him look awful in retrospect. News outlet Breaking 911 posted screenshots of Instagram posts to its Twitter page on Oct. 21, 2021, showing that Instagram targeted the group for quoting Biden. One tweet quoted Biden sarcastically saying "Freedom! ...I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID. No, I mean, come on! Freedom?!”
The second Breaking 911 screenshot featured Biden lambasting former President Donald Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate Accords. Biden was quoted saying, "When Pres. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord...the agreement was that we could not, if we reached beyond 1.5°C increase in temperature, we're gone. Not a joke. Not a joke. And so, we decided that, he pulled out - first thing I committed to do was rejoin that accord." Instagram reportedly removed the posts. According to Breaking 911, "Instagram has again flagged the @Breaking911 account for directly quoting the President of the United States, claiming our posts promoted 'violence and incitement.’"
The list of censorship targets included an array of prominent influencers on social media: Trump; lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA); news outlets like the New York Post, The Washington Free Beacon and The Federalist; satire site The Babylon Bee; celebrities like Donald Trump Jr. and James Woods, and media personalities like Daily Wire host Candace Owens, Salem radio host Sebastian Gorka and radio host Dana Loesch.
MRC Free Speech America’s research relied on its CensorTrack database for this study. The database describes why people were censored for blasting Biden. CensorTrack is an MRC database designed to show the proof of the extent of Big Tech censorship of conservatives. The database team has logged over 3,600 overall cases of censorship on multiple Big Tech platforms concerning a myriad of issues such as elections, COVID-19, climate change and race. Each CensorTrack entry includes a written report backed up by internal records and documentation proving censorship.
https://censortrack.org/protecting-president-big-tech-censors-biden-criticism-646-times-over-two-years