Tuesday was a banner day for censorship in America.

Within an hour of each other, I saw two prominent individuals lose access to major publishing platforms. In one case, Apple removed with no warning and no explanation Glenn Beck’s podcast from their platform, and in the other Scott Adams announced that Amazon has permanently banned him from self-publishing his books on their Kindle platform.

.@AmazonKDP (for independent publishers) banned me for life this week, so my book launch for Reframe Your Brain might be delayed.

Their stated reason is that I don't own my own content, although they have documents proving I do. I get no response when I ask who they think owns… pic.twitter.com/FCokGDITEj

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 15, 2023

In both cases, the cause could be some sort of glitch, and both are holding out hope that public pressure can get through to an actual decision-maker who could at least explain the reasoning behind the moves. As you likely know, these wildly profitable enterprises have worse customer service than a fly-by-night Chinese manufacturer whose experience with English is using Google Translate.

I have a feeling these “issues” with @Apple and others will keep happening the more we’re over the target. pic.twitter.com/RvATfZdUzJ

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) August 16, 2023

People who make money creating content need access to customers, and these “platforms” have a stranglehold on the means of distribution. YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are the conduits to the customer base and have inordinate power to make or break a content creator should they so choose.

Unsurprisingly these platforms often collude through “independent” third parties, which in turn are largely funded by Left-wing organizations which create phony “safety” guidelines and “fact checks” which are used to gatekeep access to the public.

Ben Shapiro did a (mildly) deep dive into one of these groups and how “brand safety” is now used as a catch-all excuse for shutting conservatives up. Ironically, companies like Target and Bud Light did perfectly brand-safe things by these standards, at the cost of billions of dollars in lost revenues and company value.

Ironically, YouTube has suppressed monetization for Episode 1 of my new YouTube series, Facts, because it “discusses New World Order, which is a non-monetizable ‘conspiracy theory’ under [YouTube’s] Dangerous Acts in ad-friendly guidelines.”

Except nothing in the video is a… pic.twitter.com/rPj5d1JhA2

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 10, 2023

Add all the platforms together and you have a near-stranglehold on the market, and that stranglehold is used to promote certain narratives and silence others. Think of all the “conspiracy theories” during COVID that turned out to be true, and how much government-approved misinformation was promoted by Big Tech.

I am old enough to remember when people who argued that myocarditis was a problem with the vaccines were de-platformed, and criticizing vaccines as unable to prevent transmission of the virus was verboten. Those who were silenced were right, and those who were promoted by Big Tech were knowingly lying.

I am also old enough to remember when it was a “conspiracy theory” that COVID may have escaped from the Wuhan lab. You could get banned for saying it. Now we learn that even the authors who wrote a paper (at the behest of Fauci) claiming it surely didn’t happen actually suspected or even believed it had.

Censorship, you see, isn’t even intended to ensure only “true” information is shared; it is all about ensuring the proper Narrative™ is.

That is almost certainly the case here, where Ben Shapiro gets demonitized, Glenn Beck is removed from Apple Podcasts, and Scott Adams is banned from Amazon publishing. It is about propping up the Narrative™. Once a dissenter gets prominent enough they get censored.

We here at Hot Air have had the same thing done to us, as you know. We are not a “brand safe” publisher and hence many advertisers are steered away from monetizing our writing. That is why we keep on asking you to chip in to keep Hot Air and all the Townhall properties going. You can sign up for VIP access to exclusive content at hotair.com/subscribe and use code SAVEAMERICA to get 40% off.

UPDATE:

Looks like Apple restored my 3000+ episodes to their platform but still don't have clear answers as to why this happened. Hope to have an update for you tomorrow on radio.

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) August 16, 2023

Update: Lifetime ban on me reversed today without explanation. Stay tuned.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 16, 2023