ANH Launches Petition to Curb Big Tech Censorship

by ANH-USA | Apr 18, 2024

THE TOPLINE

We’ve just launched a campaign to fight the growing wave of censorship that is becoming institutionalized by Big Tech companies, in collusion with the US and other governments and the World Health Organization (WHO).
YouTube’s new “medical misinformation” policy disallows content that goes against institutions like the CDC and the WHO. Big Tech censorship started with COVID, but has since expanded to other areas of health not concerning pandemics or infectious diseases.
This includes YouTube’s shadowbans which suppress content from experts on ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting.
We’ve launched this campaign to get one million petition signatures calling for Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, to change its medical misinformation policy to one that serves public, not corporate, interests, and for Big Tech to be more transparent about its content moderation policies.

FreeSpeech4Health campaign launch

At ANH, we have launched a major campaign this week that aims to force YouTube to change its medical misinformation policy and stop its censorship of natural health information.

We call on all individuals and organizations who care about Big Government and Big Tech collusion that bans, limits, or reduces our exposure to natural health information supported by plausible evidence to partner with us and distribute our petition, campaign video, and related materials, including campaign memes.

By targeting YouTube, which has the most developed, anti-natural health ‘medical misinformation’ policy, we hope, together, to be able to stop other social media and Big tech companies from following suit.

Why we must act to stop Big Tech censorship

Big Tech censorship of health information online is undermining our fundamental civil liberties, threatening our ability to think critically, discover truth, reject falsehoods, and engage with diverse viewpoints. Powerful forces—the government, public health institutions, and AI-driven algorithms developed at private Big Tech companies—are controlling what we see and, perhaps more importantly, what we don’t see. Information that could improve your health is being undermined, censored, and shadowbanned—it has to stop.

That’s why we’re launching our FreeSpeech4Health campaign. We’re aiming to get at least one million signatures globally, calling on Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, to change YouTube’s medical misinformation policy that now disallows or suppresses any health or medical content that isn’t in agreement with health authorities like the National Institutes of Health in the US or the World Health Organization (WHO).

What kind of information is being censored?

This censorship is all done under the guise of protecting us from misleading, false, or dangerous “misinformation.” During the pandemic, the “misinformation” label was applied to anything that might dissuade individuals from following government policies that were erroneously claimed to be “following the science,” including receiving the fast-tracked, novel COVID-19 genetic vaccines. Questioning the underlying science behind the mRNA vaccines, asking questions about vaccine safety, suggesting alternative therapies like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, zinc, vitamin D and quercetin—all of these were prime targets for Big Tech censorship.

A lawsuit brought by the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general has at least temporarily stopped collusion between the Biden Administration and tech companies that they described as “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.” While the Supreme Court judgment has yet to occur, the Washington Post has suggested that the final ruling may overturn the current injunction.

Such suppression of protected free speech was bad enough during a pandemic, when information about treating or preventing COVID with therapies other than vaccines could have saved lives. But we’ve now seen that social media tech giants have no intention of curbing this censorship in the post-pandemic era.

Quite the opposite, actually: they’re expanding their efforts into other areas of health, like intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets. Apparently, learning how these basic strategies can improve your health is just too dangerous for you, and it comes with the subtext that tech giants are also in bed with Big Pharma, which doesn’t want the masses to opt out of the drug model that delivers billions in profits to drug companies.

Shining a spotlight into the shadows

We’ve detailed how new and insidious strategies, like ‘shadowbanning’, are used to limit people’s exposure to specific content without even the content producer being aware of the censorship. When content is shadowbanned, it’s not removed from the platform—it just stops showing up in users’ feeds and searches because AI-controlled algorithms have been designed to prevent you from seeing it. Shadowbanning doesn’t just prevent us from accessing a wide range of information that shapes our view of the world around us. It can also directly affect our health and quality of life if we are denied access to health promoting, disease risk reducing, or life-saving information that just happens to compete with Big Pharma interests.

Overall, the “misinformation” witch hunt dumbs down complex scientific questions and aims to prevent certain ‘consensus’ views from being challenged, in the process limiting free speech and scientific discourse. But challenging established “truths” is what the scientific method is all about. If we let the powers-that-be dictate to us what issues can and can’t be discussed, then we erode one of the most fundamental pillars of a free, open society.

How you can support free speech for health

Together, let’s dismantle these digital barriers that prevent an open exchange of information, opinions, and experiences. We urge you to sign the petition now, stand up for free speech, and share the campaign as widely as you can. All campaign materials are free to use by any organization or individual who supports the curbing of Big Tech censorship of natural health information.