Abortion
Defending unborn lives on social media is a difficult thing given Big Tech’s strong pro-abortion bias. Pro-life groups and individuals have faced suspensions, bans, the inability to advertise their content and been falsely fact-checked by pro-abortion sources. Their messages, including stories of abortion survivors, have been prohibited for being “inflammatory,” “inappropriate” or “sensational.”
The leftist Center for Countering Digital Hate led a cadre of woke groups in 2022 in demanding the Google broadly censor pro-life perspectives from its search results. In response, 17 Republican state attorneys general warned Google of potential legal action if it bows to leftist pro-abortion pressure to target pro-lifers.
On the other side of the equation, Big Tech regularly allows violent posts against supporters of pro-life beliefs to remain on social media platforms. MRC Free Speech America found 67 posts after the overturning of Roe v. Wade threatening or calling for violence against Supreme Court justices, the government or pro-lifers across TikTok, Twitter and Instagram.
COVID-19
Big Tech has ruthlessly targeted COVID-19 content, both during the pandemic and as society moves back toward pre-pandemic normalcy. In February 2022, MRC found over 800 cases of Big Tech censoring the COVID-19 debate from March 17, 2020, to Feb. 3, 2022.
Censorship has taken the form of bans, deleted content and other restrictions. Targeted posts have generally pertained to the virus, vaccines, and/or masking and other government mitigation policies.
Individuals and organizations censored over coronavirus-related content include prominent social media influencers: podcaster Joe Rogan, conservative radio hosts Dan Bongino and Mark Levin, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, news organizations from Fox News to Reason magazine, as well as prominent academic journals like the British Medical Journal.
Transgenderism
Social media platforms vociferously censor "transgender"-related content. MRC counted nearly 12 million times in the first quarter of 2022 that users on social media had information kept from them on the topic of so-called "transgenderism."
Anything that calls out "transgender" U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine for being a man has caught the ire of Silicon Valley's authoritarian censors. Big Tech's painstaking suppression human biology was on full display in the first quarter, when Twitter placed restrictions on Fox News Host Tucker Carlson, Christian satire site The Babylon Bee and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Twitter restricted the accounts of The Babylon Bee and Kirk for calling transgender U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine a man. As for Carlson, he tweeted that both The Babylon Bee’s and Kirk’s tweets about Levine’s gender “are true,” earning him a deleted post from the platform.
Conflict/War/Foreign Affairs
Conflict-related content -- or content that involves war and alleged violence -- in recent years has emerged as a primary target of Big Tech censorship.
Social media companies have launched attacks against social media users posting alternative perspectives on everything from the race riots of 2020 to the War in Ukraine.
One egregious example of war-related censorship happened when YouTube in March 2022 put two content filters on a Fox News video of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Fox News host Laura Ingraham about the Ukraine War, as noted in a March 9 CensorTrack entry. Gabbard's apparent offense only had to do with mentioning that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly open to engaging in negotiations to compromise with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war.
In January 2022, Twitter locked conservative commentator Todd Starnes's account after encouragement from Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Conservative radio host Todd Starnes tweeted remember when Biden failed to vet any of the Afghan 'refugees'? #synagogue #colleyville," according to a screenshot he sent to CensorTrack. Starnes's tweet referenced the concurrent Colleyville, TX synagogue hostage situation that the FBI labeled a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted.
Elections
Big Tech painstakingly works to influence elections in favor of leftist candidates. This was perhaps most evident in the 2020 presidential election, when Facebook and Twitter launched coordinated, totalitarian attacks on New York Post reporting that alleged corruption between Ukrainian energy company associates, and Hunter Biden and now President Joe Biden. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, liberally biased Facebook fact-checker Lead Stories released 18 “fact-checks” defending President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Twitter responded to the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden report by disabling the link to the story on the day it was released, and claimed: “Warning: this link may be unsafe.” Twitter then restricted the Post account from Oct. 14 to Oct. 30, 2020. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, former Trump administration attorney Jenna Ellis, Missouri gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens and videos from the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference are examples of election-related content censored by Big Tech.
Climate Change
This highly partisan issue is commonly debated. Those who disagree with the mainstream narrative that humans are destroying the planet and causing the climate to change are often labeled "Climate Change Deniers." Joe Biden's National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy in June 2022 called on tech companies to "really jump in" to combat so-called disinformation and misinformation. The leftist Center for Countering Digital Hate in November 2021 released a report called "The Toxic Ten," which targeted the MRC and other conservative organizations for daring to challenge left-wing, climate-change, fear-mongering narratives.
Economics
Though economic commentary on social media is usually boilerplate and straightforward, Big Tech regularly censors certain perspectives on the economy to protect liberals. Frequently censored economic topics include attempted re-definitions of the word "recession," criticism of inflationary Biden administration policies as well as pro-cryptocurrency content.
Education/CRT
Big Tech has sought to protect the U.S. education system from criticism around topics including critical race theory, transgender ideology and student loan debt. In April 2022, LinkedIn suspended Air Force veteran Gretchen Smith's account for saying student loan forgiveness would be unfair to people who already paid off their loans or didn't go to college. Other education-related posts censored in 2022 include a Twitter suspension of an account that re-posted liberal teachers' gender- and sexuality-related TikTok videos, and a YouTube deletion of a Daily Signal video of a Virginia mom speaking against mask mandates.
Immigration
Big Tech has engaged in callous censorship of groups supporting fair immigration policy. Slack even went so far in June 2022 to totally ban the Federation for American Immigration Reform from its platform. Tech platforms have also heavily focused on suppressing content critical of illegal immigrants and content supporting construction of a wall along the U.S. southern border.