Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai today about the removal of images from a recent press conference held by the organization’s Frontline Doctors organization. Steube argued that the videos are “free speech and you have these doctors who are giving their opinion as doctors.”
Appearing via the video link to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee antitrust panel today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was questioned by Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) about the removal of company images from a recent press conference held in Washington DC by an organization called America’s Frontline Doctors
Breitbart News recently reported that Masters of the Universe quickly censored a live broadcast published by Breitbart News of a press conference held in Washington DC by America’s Frontline Doctors group and hosted and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC) appeared at the event and doctors at the event shared their views on the coronavirus pandemic and the treatment of the virus by the medical community.
Images from the Breitbart News from the press conference on Periscope, Twitter’s live streaming platform, had generated 1 million views before being removed by the site. The images on Facebook accumulated more than 17 million visits in 8 hours and had 185,000 concurrent viewers at the time of their transmission. On YouTube, a clip from the event received 80,000 views before being removed by the platform for “violating the YouTube Community Guidelines”.
Speaking of deleting the video, Steube said to Pichai: “Mr. Pichai, there are riot groups that are not controlled with the publication of what I would say is a very violent video, but yesterday a video about doctors discussing hydroxychloroquine and the dangers of children returning to school, and when I clicked on the link, it was removed and then they sent me a different link on YouTube and it was removed, and I just double-checked to make sure it says ‘this video has been removed for violating YouTube community guidelines’. How can doctors who give their opinion on a drug they believe is effective for the treatment of COVID-19 and doctors who think it appropriate for children to return to school violate the YouTube community guidelines when all of these are published? videos of violence on YouTube? “
Pichai replied: “Congressman, we believe in freedom of expression and there is a lot of debate on YouTube about effective ways of dealing with COVID and we allow for robust debate, but during a pandemic we turned to local health authorities, for example in the US. It would be the CDC, to get guidelines on medical disinformation in a narrow way that could cause harm in the real world and, for example, if there are aspects of a video and explicitly states that something could be a proven cure and that it does not comply with CDC, we would eliminate it ”
Steube replied: “But it is a free expression and there are doctors who express their opinion as doctors and I do not understand why YouTube and, therefore, Google consider it appropriate to silence doctors and their opinion about what can help and cure people with COVID-19. “
Breitbart News has been covering today’s audience in detail, follow our live thread here.
Lucas Nolan is a Breitbart News reporter who covers issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact by secure email at [email protected]
