Big Tech’s Double-Standard On Conservative Comics Is Getting Worse

It’s a situation so funny that a growing number of ostracized comics forgot to laugh: Conservative-leaning material, they say, is increasingly subject to arbitrary online censorship by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media giants — treatment that appears to have no other explanation except the targets’s bucking of leftist orthodoxy.

Openly conservative stand-up Nick Di Paolo got suspended from YouTube for supposedly sharing false information, after ridiculing the left’s exaggerations of the virus in attacking President Trump. Comedian Chrissie Mayr’s video mocking China’s handling of COVID-19 — “Kung Flu Fighting” — was erased by Instagram, which deemed it “hate speech” despite featuring a diverse lineup of comics. The Babylon Bee, the right’s online answer to the satirical site The Onion, has been at war with Facebook for years. The social media giant intermittently threatens to de-platform the site for spoof articles that moderators apparently take seriously, such as its 2018 report that CNN had purchased industrial-sized washing machines to better “spin” the news.

Online censorship threats are a bread-and-butter concern for comedians because their economic dependence on social media has only increased as many stand-up clubs remain shuttered due to the pandemic and TV gigs remain a distant dream. For them, online business is the bottom line.