TikTok Blacklists PragerU

Non-profit organization PragerU, founded by radio host Dennis Prager to produce short informative videos on conservative topics, has been permanently blacklisted from Chinese-owned social media app TikTok.

“Tik Tok has permanently banned PragerU from its platform for ‘multiple violations’ of their community guidelines,” PragerU wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “This is blatant censorship.” The organization started a petition over TikTok’s blacklisting.

🚨CENSORSHIP🚨

Tik Tok has permanently banned PragerU from its platform for "multiple violations" of their community guidelines. This is blatant censorship.
Sign and share the petition to help PragerU fight back against Big Tech censorship! 👉 https://t.co/qBACSybaB9 pic.twitter.com/PLI7xNOP5X

— PragerU (@prageru) April 8, 2021

TikTok is the latest tech platform to censor PragerU, as the group has faced censorship from several platforms including Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube.

Last year, Facebook buried PragerU’s page and “reduced distribution” of its posts claiming that the group has engaged in “repeated sharing of false news.” The decision came after a fact check of a PragerU video about polar bears by Facebook third-party fact-checker Climate Feedback.

Breitbart News also reported in 2018 that Facebook claimed that a 99.9999 percent drop in engagement on PragerU’s page was the result of an “employee error.”

In 2019, Spotify banned advertisements from PragerU on its platform, writing an email to the conservative group stating that “the content of the ads do not comply with our editorial policies.”

“On further review of your website, there are additional compliance concerns with the content of the site which listeners of the ads are directed to,” Spotify added. “Our policy team has made the decision to stop all existing ads and not approve any new ads coming through in the future.”

Google-owned YouTube has also censored PragerU, placing 80 of their 400 videos are on a “restricted list,” according to the organization’s founder.

The restricted mode feature is used in order to block videos that have been deemed inappropriate, such as pornography or violence.

PragerU filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent Google in 2017 over alleged censorship of their videos.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.