RFK Jr. Emergency Hearing on Alleged Censorship Set for Wednesday

A judge has scheduled an emergency hearing for Wednesday in a case in which an attorney and Democratic presidential aspirant, Robert Kennedy Jr., is alleging that YouTube violated his First Amendment rights by taking down videos apparently in violation of its own terms of service.Federal Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins of the Northern District of California scheduled the hearing, which will address Mr. Kennedy’s request for a temporary order that would ban YouTube from removing content featuring Mr. Kennedy throughout his campaign for the Democratic nomination.“We are grateful that Judge Cousins recognized the importance of this matter and set an early hearing on Mr. Kennedy’s request,” Mr. Kennedy’s attorney, Scott Street, said in a statement. “Google will not suffer any harm from being ordered not to censor Mr. Kennedy during his campaign. But society will suffer if the censorship continues.”At issue in the case is the removal of a few videos featuring Mr. Kennedy from YouTube, including a video of a speech Mr. Kennedy recently gave at Saint Anselm College at New Hampshire.An interview with the Daily Wire host, Jordan Peterson, and Mr. Kennedy was also removed earlier this summer. Both videos were removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service concerning vaccines.In the interview with Mr. Peterson, Mr. Kennedy alleged that he had a documentary about the supposed link between vaccines and autism — a topic explicitly covered by YouTube’s terms of service — “killed by corporate.” At the Saint Anselm College event in March, Mr. Kennedy talked at length about his skepticism about vaccines in general and the Covid vaccine in particular.Other parts of Mr. Kennedy’s interview with Mr. Peterson are still up on YouTube, such as a discussion of environmentalism. Mr. Kennedy’s own campaign page also has about 93 videos on the platform. Clips from and coverage of the Saint Anselm speech are also still up on the platform, though the original full speech is not available.YouTube’s publicly available vaccine misinformation policy states that the platform “doesn’t allow content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHAs) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidance about specific health conditions and substances.”Later in the policy, the company clarifies that it applies to “currently administered and approved vaccines” and encompasses misinformation related to vaccine safety, vaccine efficacy, and vaccine ingredients.In Mr. Kennedy’s lawsuit, he suggests that YouTube, in enforcing its terms of service, did so “based on statements from the Biden administration about what information to censor.”In a statement to the Sun, a Google spokesman, José Castañeda, called Mr. Kennedy’s claims “meritless” and said, “we look forward to refuting them.”“YouTube applies its Community Guidelines independently, transparently, and consistently, regardless of political viewpoint,” Mr. Castañeda said.In a parallel case, the 5th Circuit is expected to rule on the limits of communication between the government and social media companies in a complaint concerning communications between the administration and companies over claims around the Covid vaccine, President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and election fraud claims.

RFK Jr. Emergency Hearing on Alleged Censorship Set for Wednesday

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