Alphabet-owned YouTube is censoring The Babylon Bee after the publication shared the leaked partial manifesto of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who shot and killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville in March.
“Normally we’re flagged for misinformation, incitement, or hateful conduct. This is our first ‘violent criminal organizations’ policy violation,” said Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter.
Normally we're flagged for misinformation, incitement, or hateful conduct. This is our first "violent criminal organizations" policy violation. pic.twitter.com/NCuadnebEx
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) November 8, 2023
Popular podcaster Steven Crowder, who first released the leaked documents Monday, received the same message when he shared the partial manifesto on YouTube.
Investigative journalism is now considered a “criminal organization” according to @YouTube
Wait until you see what we have in store for tomorrow.
Rumble only. 10AM ET.#NashvilleManifesto #MugClubUndercover pic.twitter.com/YpTIouuzyW
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) November 7, 2023
As reported by The Tennessee Star, tech giants in Silicon Valley have been working overtime to stop the documents, which express Hale’s intent to kill “crackers” with “white privilege,” from being shared on their platforms.
Facebook (now Meta), censored Crowder too.
Crowder posted a screenshot of a message from Facebook saying that his post “looks similar to content we’ve removed for going against our Community Standards,” and prompted him to delete the post in order to “avoid potential account restrictions.”
BREAKING: @facebook is now censoring the #NashvilleManifesto https://t.co/vDGAPPh7Oa pic.twitter.com/iVso967VHl
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) November 6, 2023
Crowder and Dillon posted the screenshots of the violations on Elon Musk-owned X, which is the only large social media platform that has not actively censored the partial manifesto.
Mike Benz, who founded the Foundation for Freedom Online, a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of speech on the internet, commented on the censorship.
“Censorship doesn’t make pattern recognition go away. It just validates [people’s] personal attachment to the most pernicious aspects of that pattern, plus low-boil resentment toward those trying to stop you from noticing,” he said Tuesday morning on X, as reported by The Star.
Wednesday afternoon, the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said it has placed seven officers on “administrative leave” in connection to the leaking of the document after the law enforcement entity vowed to hunt down those responsible for the leak.
However, when the documents were released Monday, MNPD told The Star that it had “no idea” what the documents were.
The Star is still fighting its legal battle for the full release of the manifesto, which was hidden away for seven months after it was recovered the day of the shooting.
“Tuesday, attorneys for The Star’s parent company Star News Digital Media Inc. filed a motion to compel limited discovery in its ongoing lawsuit to force the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to release Hale’s full manifesto,” The Star reported. “The motion seeks to compel limited discovery to force the FBI to determine the authenticity of the pages released by Crowder.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
