What began as a way to stay in touch with college friends became the biggest social network in the world with 2.9 billion users. Thirty-six percent of them get their news on Facebook, according to Pew Research Center. Wielding that power, the platform is one of the biggest censors of conservative viewpoints through unfair application of company policies.

Those policies are extremely far left, from providing dozens of gender options to enforcing "hate speech" guidelines disproportionately against Christians and pro-lifers.

A Facebook partnership with Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) established a well-oiled fact-checking program generally used to dismiss posts that the platform disagrees with. Poynter, a journalism nonprofit, received $1.3 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Network in 2017 to expand IFCN.

Contact Facebook: (650) 308-7300, Facebook, Twitter or by mail at 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025

Instagram, owned by Facebook parent company Meta, seems innocuous enough when it comes to sharing content. But in reality, the insidious censorship on the platform attacks Christians, conservatives, and the pro-life movement.

The photo and short video sharing app, Instagram, has more than 2 billion monthly users and is worth upwards of $110 billion. One of the most common accusations against Instagram is over shadow banning user content, even though the company continues to deny the practice. Shadow banning is the act of secretly hiding a user’s content from their followers, or blocking it from the “Explore” feature.

Contact Instagram: Call (415) 857-3369, email support@instagram.com, Facebook, Twitter or mail to 181 South Park Street Suite 2 San Francisco, CA 94107.

The Media Research Center (MRC) found in 2018 that when it comes to censoring conservatives on social media, Twitter was the clear leader. The same year, former CEO Jack Dorsey claimed in front of Congress that it does not make decisions based on “political ideology,” and strives for impartial enforcement. Dorsey was CEO 2015-2021. Under his leadership, the platform morphed from a free speech free-for-all to a haven for the left and a censor of the right.

Parag Agrawal took over as company CEO in November 2021. Prior to his promotion, Agrawal said Twitter's role was "not to be bound by the First Amendment."

Twitter’s culture and workforce is so liberal that conservative staff members “don’t feel safe to express their opinions,” Dorsey said in an August 2018 interview. This liberalism also shows up in whom it suspends or bans, members of its Trust and Safety Council, whom and how it fact-checks, and in how it defines hateful or violent content. Its fact-checking team is led by Yoel Roth, who has called the Trump administration “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.” Its Trust and Safety Council is also chock-full of liberal groups including GLAAD and the Anti-Defamation League.

Contact Twitter: (415) 222-9670, Facebook, Twitter or mail to 1355 Market Street Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103

YouTube is the second most popular website in the world, behind Google. Alphabet owns both. YouTube has tremendous power to control information for its roughly 1.7 billion monthly users or more.

Although YouTube claims not to control information in a politically biased way, the site axed hundreds of campaign ads for former President Donald Trump and demonetized and suppressed conservative content, including content posted by pundits and pro-lifers. It also strictly limits firearms-related content. YouTube funds left-wing media initiatives, works diligently to “make sure that there's no bias” against the LGBTQ community and uses the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center as a “Trusted Flagger” to eliminate supposedly hateful content.

Most of the site’s censorship comes through enforcement of YouTube policies, which are in themselves biased against the right. It has rules for firearms, so-called hate speech and harassment and can enforce them by video removal, age restriction, demonetization, account suspensions and bans. And that doesn’t even touch the potential for algorithmic biases (which the company denies exist). Once videos get removed, there’s very little chance of reinstatement, according to a 2020 company report.

Contact YouTube: (650) 623-4000, Facebook, Twitter or by mail 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA, 94043.

Once known as a bastion of free speech online, Reddit became openly hostile to conservative views in recent years, especially pro-Trump views. A series of company actions drove many pro-Trump voices off the social discussion and ranking site that bills itself as the “front page of the internet.” And that was even before Reddit officially banned r/The_Donald subreddit in June 2020.

The company claimed it banned the community (once as big as 800,000 users) for violating harassment, hate speech and content manipulation policies. It purged 7,000 subreddits for hate speech in 2020. Critics argued this was targeted censorship because left-wing harassment, threats, doxxing and hate speech happen in many unbanned subreddits. In May 2020, Republican lawmakers threatened to take action over Reddit’s use of a “progressive bludgeon.”

As the ninth most popular U.S. social media website, Reddit boasted 430 million active monthly users in October 2021. Although initially supporting free speech, Reddit has turned to cracking down and suppressing it, including by banning climate skepticism from the science subreddit.

Contact Reddit: Email contact@reddit.com, Twitter, Facebook, or mail 1455 Market St., San Francisco, CA, 94103.

LinkedIn may have a reputation as the professional social network, one that can help you find work. But it also has ties to an anti-Trump activist who spent millions to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020. Major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn. He actively campaigned against Trump in 2019 and called him “worse than useless” as president. Hoffman also gave $100,000 to an organization that used fake social media accounts to manipulate an Alabama special election.

Seen in this light, it makes conservatives’ claims that LinkedIn hid their posts far more plausible. In 2020, leaked audio of a conversation with LinkedIn leaders about Trump revealed the company is willing to “restrict speech” it deemed “incitement to violence.”

One of the company’s most controversial decisions came when it chose profits over freedom by agreeing to censor content in China in 2014 to operate in the communist country. Even while it agreed to censor its platform in China, LinkedIn Executive Chairman Jeff Weiner claimed, “LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship.”

Hoffman and four others in Silicon Valley founded LinkedIn in 2003. Microsoft bought the company in 2016 for $26 billion, but the companies say it functions as an independent entity. A year later, Microsoft added Hoffman to its board. The network has roughly 822 million global users.

Contact LinkedIn: (650) 687-3600, Facebook, Twitter or by mail 222 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105

Because Parler was designed as a free speech response to Twitter, many conservatives banned or purged by other platforms have flocked to the social media company which has roughly 1.5 million users. John Matze and Jared Thompson launched Parler in 2018, as a sort of stripped down version of Twitter with a chronological feed (unlike the algorithms now used by Twitter and others)

Although the platform is open to all, conservatives angered by online censorship joined first and currently make up a majority of voices on Parler. “The whole company was never intended to be a pro-Trump thing,” Matze told CNBC. “A lot of the audience is pro-Trump. I don't care. I'm not judging them either way.”

Matze supports defeating bad ideas through dialogue instead of censorship and criticized other tech companies for controlling content through curation and moderation of content. He says his platform is different and without content bias, although there are some rules governing conduct.

Contact Parler: Facebook, Twitter or mail to 209 S. Stephanie St., Henderson, NV 89012

TikTok is a young, popular short-form video tech platform. It’s also extremely controversial. Globally, the app has been downloaded more than 3 billion times. It has roughly 80 million active monthly users in the United States. But its ownership by Bytedance, a Chinese company with communist party ties, has generated privacy, cybersecurity and national security concerns.

The U.S. Armed Forces and Transportation Security Administration have both banned the app over cybersecurity risks. Concerned private information about Americans could be shared with the communist Chinese government, former President Donald Trump’s administration issued an executive order in August 2020, to ban the app, before a federal judge lifted the executive order.

TikTok reportedly admitted in 2022 that its China-based employees can access data from app users in the U.S.

Contact TikTok: feedback@tiktok.com, Contact Page, Facebook, Twitter, 10010 Venice Blvd., #301, Culver City, CA 90232

Truth Social is former President Donald Trump's social media platform, which launched on Presidents Day in 2022 as a free-speech alternative to mainstream platforms like Twitter.

Just two months after Truth Social went live, leftists started trying to cancel it. The George Soros-funded Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington urged Apple in April 2022 to ban Truth Social from its app store, citing the platform's supposed “lenient approach to content moderation,” the spread of "dangerous disinformation," purported encouragement of "mobilization of anti-democratic groups" and the supposed "threat of violence" on the platform.

As of April 2022, Truth Social had about 513,000 daily active users, Marketwatch reported. Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group, Truth Social's parent company.

Contact Truth Social: (800) 798-5754, Truth Social or mail at 1100 S. Ocean Blvd., Palm Beach, FL 33480

Former advisor for President Donald Trump Jason Miller founded this platform, which launched on July 4, 2021. Privately held, the company bills itself as "a marketplace of ideas," "champions free speech" and "rejects cancel-culture," according to its website.

GETTR, which was "created to combat online censorship," now has over 2 million users, according to its About page. The company boasts that it gives users the ability to edit and add filters to images, post videos up to three minutes long, craft posts up to 777 characters, edit videos within the app and livestream up to 60 minutes.

Upon the app's launch, leftists started trying to cancel it. The Daily Beast ran an article in July 2021, a day after GETTR's launch, noting supposed ties between Miller and anti-Chinese communist billionaire Guo Wengui, who is also friends with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Even though Miller said some initial seed money for GETTR came from Guo's family foundation, The Beast nonetheless reported, "while Miller downplayed Guo’s connection, sites associated with the billionaire have suggested that Gettr is Guo’s brainchild." 

Contact GETTR: GETTR, 651 N. Broad St., Suite 206, Middletown, DE 19709