YouTube appears to be – no, it definitely is – blocking links to American Thinker. When one attempts to post a comment to a YouTube video or to reply to someone else’s comment that includes a link to American Thinker, the comment cannot be posted. This is the message one receives:

We weren’t able to add your reply. Please try again.

“Trying again” achieves nothing except the same result no matter how many attempts are made. When the same comment is attempted again, but without the American Thinker link, the comment is posted immediately.

I first noticed this phenomenon on Friday as I attempted to reply to a viewer’s comment to the video of Jamie Glazov’s interview with me on the subject of “What’s Up With Fox News?” – the same topic as my feature article at American Thinker today (Sunday, February 14). When my reply didn’t go through after multiple attempts, I deleted the link to AT from my draft comment and it was posted without delay.

This is not a temporary glitch. The same result was noticed again in an attempt to post a comment to YouTube that I made this morning (February 14).

Screen shot of the result of an attempt to post a reply at YouTube with a link to American Thinker February 14, 2021

So, what are we to make of this? It’s pretty clear – the algorithms or bots of YouTube, which is owned by Google, are blocking any links to American Thinker. This should not come as a total surprise. Back in the day (circa 2007 when I started contributing to American Thinker), a search of news sites using Google’s news dot google dot com would produce multiple hits to AT articles. About two years ago, I noticed that that was no longer the case. It was not possible to find any links to anything published at American Thinker.

At that time (2019), searches at Google’s main search portal still yielded links to American Thinker. Early this morning I tested Google’s main search portal again. It now appears that the required search terms must be extremely precise and surrounded by quotes in order to return any links to American Thinker.

Google has a well-documented history of dissing conservative news and opinion sites including American Thinker. On August 15, 2019, I wrote an article at AT about Google whistleblower Zachary Vorhies, and this was the lead:

Buried deep in the extensive trove of internal documents documenting Google’s onerous censorship policies is this gem: American Thinker was on the dominant tech giant’s list of “blacklisted” news websites

My article in 2019 included this telling paragraph:

The complete set of documents [leaked by Vorhies], which can be downloaded from Project Veritas’s web site, and Vorhies’s testimony comprise an insider’s complement to the work of noted research psychologist Robert Epstein, Ph.D., who I had the privilege of interviewing for an hour on September 4, 2018 on The Hagmann Report in a conversation titled “Big Tech can shift 12 million votes in November [2018].” Epstein has emerged as a leading critic of Big Tech from a scientifically-grounded research viewpoint. In sworn testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “Google and Censorship through Search Engines” on July 16, 2019, Epstein testified that “In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported).” Epstein went on to note that the potential for Google to influence millions of voters’ election results in 2020 is even greater.

Conclusion a year and a half later now? The censorship of social media including Google searches and now even including YouTube (the #2 most visited website in the world second only to Google) are growing more pervasive and ominous by the day. As well as unaccountable. What can be the reason for this? Am I the only one (I don’t think so) who is concerned that the First Amendment is now hanging by a thread?

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  He also appears in the media, including recently as a contributor to OANN, BBC World News, and The Glazov Gang.  Peter's website is http://peter.media.  His YouTube channel is here.  For updates on his work, follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.