In response to censorship by YouTube and Google, the conservative social media giant PragerU sent an “LED-covered truck” to Silicon Valley, playing some of PragerU’s banned videos on a giant screen and loudspeakers, Fox News reports.
PragerU, founded by and named after author and radio host Dennis Prager, specializes in publishing five-minute videos featuring experts, media personalities, and political figures breaking down the major issues of the day, with illustrations and research included.
But YouTube, which is owned by Google and has a well-documented bias against conservatives on the platform, has restricted over 200 of PragerU’s videos, according to a statement by PragerU.
The stunt involving the truck, which included stopping outside YouTube’s headquarters at 1000 Cherry Avenue, San Bruno, California, was in preparation for opening arguments in PragerU’s highly-anticipated lawsuit against the company in California’s Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that PragerU has been “unfairly censored” by the tech giant solely because of its conservative content.
The PragerU YouTube channel has over 2.3 million subscribers, and has accumulated over 800 million total video views. YouTube has banned numerous high-profile conservative and right-wing channels over the last several years.
In June of this year, YouTube demonetized a number of conservative channels, including commentator Steven Crowder, in what many referred to as the “Adpocalypse.” In August, the website banned three sizeable right-wing channels on the same day, with the most prominent being James Allsup, a former national leader of Students for Trump, who had over 450,000 subscribers. In September, the website blanket-banned nearly 18,000 channels for alleged “hateful or abusive” content. In August of 2018, YouTube banned the official channel for Alex Jones’ InfoWars, which had 2.3 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion cumulative views.