Social media censorship

Here we list cases where social media platforms "de-platform" particular contributors on account of the political views expressed, and delete their articles, or restrict visibility of some articles/videos. Also where payment processors refuse to process payments for particular content creators, for similar reasons.

Human Rights Watch has produced a report Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook.

Scott Ritter

In this article referring to his two-part documentary, "Agent Zelensky" he says

YouTube deplatformed the documentary, demonetized my account, and eventually banned me from the platform altogether.
This documentary is described here, here, and here, and is available on Rumble here and here.

June 2025: I guess he is no longer "banned from [YouTube] altogether", sinc he says that he posted something else - which has been taken down by YouTube: The US-Russia Summit that YouTube doesn't want you to know about

Chris Hedges

He writes

The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube...

I was on RT because, as a critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I was on RT for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew, was on Voice of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. It was that or not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of Washington than I have for those of Moscow.

What were my sins? I did not, like my former employer, The New York Times, sell you the lie of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, peddle conspiracy theories about Donald Trump being a Russian asset, put out a ten-part podcast called the Caliphate that was a hoax, or tell you that the contents on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “disinformation.”

In fact an archive of the On Contact shows seems to be available on rt.com, but only up to February 2022 (shortly before the article linked above appeared). Then there is also a Youtube channel currently available which apparently contains episodes from 7 and 8 years ago.

Meanwhile, he has lots of up-to-date videos and articles on his substack (and do read his article Why subscribe?).

UPDATE June 2025: he has written a book A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine

The Cradle

This article states

On 16 August [2024], Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta permanently banned The Cradle from its social media platforms for allegedly violating community guidelines by "praising terrorist organizations" and engaging in "incitement to violence."

"No one can see or find your account, and you can't use it. All your information will be permanently deleted," reads the message accompanying the ban on Instagram, where The Cradle had surpassed 107,000 followers and amassed millions of views.

So obviously the Streisand Effect reading recommendation here is The Cradle.

Bassem Youssef

The same Cradle article also says
On 20 August, Elon Musk banned popular Egyptian comedian Bassem Yousef's account on X.
Here are some interview on Youtube, Bassem Yousef with Piers Morgan

Facebook

Facebook has severely restricted the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach an audience during the Israel-Gaza war. Apparently the BBC examined 20 prominent Palestinian-based news organisations but the article named only three:

Indrajit Samarajiva

He describes How I Was Demonetized By Medium from October 2023, saying
I'm getting the message loud and clear. STFU about Palestine.
He writes in more detail here, Why I Left Medium (They Defenestrated Me) Amazingly (as he is based in Sri Lanka)
FBI agents came to my sisters place of work looking for me
He now writes on his own website, https://indi.ca/. Highly recommended.

Owen Jones

He writes I've been suspended by Instagram. Apparently they give him the right to appeal, but this right is meaningless since they don't say why, except in a totally non-specific way (ie, not following Community Standards on dangerous organisations and individuals).

Whether or not he has violated any reasonable community standards (and from what I've read or viewed of his work I think it unlikely), it is quite wrong that an organisation with such power should be so unaccountable and (effectively) beyond challenge. And it is those who use Instagram - and other Meta products - who give it that power. So, don't use them!

He says "Substack is one of the few places that’s likely not to suddenly silence progressive voices": I hope that is true. Anyhow, let me recommend his own Substack channel and his YouTube videos.

[May 2025] Along the same lines, he has written Meta censored me over Palestine. Again.

Google "censorship"

Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites. This rather old article lists web sites which have suffered from a change in Google’s search protocol. As well as a recommendation to look at these sites, this is a recommendation to use a search engine other than Google.

Miral Askar

The Post That Got Me Banned: Iran, Israel, and the Nuclear Hypocrisy No One Wants to Talk About And here is another interesting one from the same author: The Forgotten Scandal: How Israel Stole Thousands of Children