PragerU Truck to Blast Banned Videos on Screens In Front of YouTube

YouTube has continued to censor PragerU videos by restricting access to them. Children and others who use “restricted mode” are unable to view the conservative educational videos, and on Friday a California court will hear arguments in a state-level case against Google. On Thursday, PragerU will drive a box truck with LED screens, playing the restricted videos throughout Silicon Valley — and directly in front of YouTube and other Big Tech offices.

“We rented a box truck with LED video screens on the side and we’re going to be playing all the PragerU videos that YouTube has restricted,” Craig Strazzeri, chief marketing officer for PragerU, told PJ Media on Tuesday. The group intends to “drive by all the Big Tech headquarters — Google, Twitter, Facebook.”

“It’s obvious that our videos are educational and appropriate for young people,” Strazzeri explained. “All young people should be watching our videos. We do hope that lots of people will be given the chance to see our videos” as the truck drives through Silicon Valley.

“As much as we need to win legally in the courtroom we also need to win publicly,” the PragerU officer said. “The goal of this is to win in the court of public opinion.”

PragerU has two simultaneous lawsuits against Google/YouTube. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard the federal case in Seattle in August, and no decision has yet come down in that case. Early this year, the organization filed another lawsuit specifically in California. California law allows PragerU to add causes of action such as breach of contract (every content creator has the same contract, but YouTube allegedly treats them differently) and consumer fraud (they claim to be a neutral platform but allegedly are not).

“We’re optimistic and hopeful that we’ll have a good outcome,” Strazzeri said.

Liberal outlets have recently suggested that the success of conservative websites and opinion makers on social media platforms undermines any claim of censorship. In a recent story about Facebook, Politico‘s Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman minimized conservative concerns about censorship. “Allegations that Facebook censors conservatives, however, have gone largely unsubstantiated—conservative publications including Fox, Breitbart, and Shapiro’s Daily Wire were among the top publishers on Facebook as of this past May, according to data from the social media tracking firm Newswhip,” they wrote.

In Senate testimony, a Google spokesman called Dennis Prager a “YouTube success story,” noting the success PragerU has had on the platform and suggesting that anyone who has been this successful has not truly faced censorship.

Strazzeri dismissed this “very silly argument.” He paraphrased the Google spokesman’s claim: “If someone has 5 million video views, it’s okay to censor them from getting 10 million video views.”

To this, Strazzeri responded, “Because a lot of people want to watch us, that doesn’t give them a reason to censor us. They always use our success as a way to delegitimize our complaint,” but the success is not relevant. PragerU could be the biggest creator on YouTube and that would not justify viewpoint discrimination or censorship.

Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.