Topic: Media Research Center
We've highlighted how the Media Research Center lamented the deplatforming of right-wing Twitter clone Gab, despite the fact that the MRC never offered its content on Gab despite its longtime campaign against Twitter for supposedly censoring conservative voices.
The MRC's Alexander Hall complained about another deplatforming in a Nov. 15 post:
“Go create your own website” has been a common reply to conservatives concerned about Big Tech censorship, but now Leftists can shut them down even when they do that.
Bitchute has marketed itself as the Free Speech alternative to Youtube, but has recently been blacklisted by PayPal. Bitchute founder Ray Vahey announced that PayPal shut down his website’s ability to receive funding through its payment service, effective immediately.
It should be noted that BitChute does have community guidelines about removing content that is truly illegal, violent, or qualifies as a call for violence.
Hall didn't mention what content on BitChute might have resulted in PayPal cutting off its services. As one website documents:
The front page of BitChute greets visitors with videos on very specific topics: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, censorship and conspiracy theories like "PizzaGate." Conspiracy videos capitalize on recent tragedies, alleging that survivors of the Parkland high school shooting are crisis actors. ... It’s the type of content that, if they were on YouTube, advertisers wouldn’t want their ads placed on.
[...]
It’s important to acknowledge who some of the biggest proponents are for platforms like BitChute and DTube are. They have the support of prominent alt-right voices, like ["ultra-nationalistic, xenophobic" videomaker Dave] Cullen; Stefan Molyneux, who is best known for his stance on eugenics and white supremacy; Mike Cernovich, one of the founding leaders of the alt-right; Jack Posobiec, a DeploraBall inauguration party organizer and a pro-Trump figure who headed multiple misinformation campaigns; Ethan Ralph, best known for helping to spearhead the hateful GamerGate movement; and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson.
Hall went on to complain:
When conservatives have previously voiced their concerns about the deplatforming of various Youtubers, many leftists and libertarians often smugly reply that in a free market, companies have a right to deny service, and that conservatives should build their own platforms. The issues with this line of thinking are twofold: 1) It is extremely difficult to build alternative platforms (consider how Google+ with all of their parent company’s resources and reputation, failed to provide a remotely competitive alternative to Facebook) and 2) Payment processors that keep platforms up and running can deny their services with no repercussions.
But mainstream conservatives are generally not affected by deplatforming -- far-right extremists are. And if the MRC were truly concerned about YouTube censoring content, it wouldn't have its own YouTube channel that, as far as we know, no content has ever been censored by YouTube (we certainly would not have heard the end of it if it had).
Once again, the hollowness of the MRC's deplatforming complaint is exposed. Just as the MRC never quit Twitter to move to Gab, it never abandoned YouTube to join BitChute. It has no standing to complain about deplatforming of social media outlets it never bothered to cultivate or support, let alone provide any content to. After all, it's easier to complain about Twitter on Twitter, and complain about YouTube on YouTube, than from another platform for which an audience has to be built.
It's saying something about the content on Gab and BitChute that even the MRC didn't want to associate itself with it -- which makes it cynical for the MRC to denounce their deplatforming without telling its readers about the content that caused the deplatforming.
