The right-wing Confederation party organized a press conference in Poland’s parliament over YouTube censorship after the tech giant, which is owned by parent company Alphabet, removed the party’s wRealu24 channel from its service.
The party believes that this is an example of preventative censorship, which is illegal under Poland’s Constitution. Back in the spring of this year, the web pages of the wRealu24 channel were blocked, probably by the Internal Security Agency (ABW).
According to the Confederation party, the move by YouTube violates the 52nd article of the Polish Constitution, which specifically forbids media censorship and exclusion. They also argue that YouTube’s actions are a violation of monopoly legislation, civil law, and press law.
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The party is calling on the Polish state to force Alphabet, which also owns Google, to comply with Polish law, according to Polish news outlet Do Rzeczy. Although the government has proposed introducing legislation to slap large fines on tech companies for censoring content, this legislation has continuously failed to materialize over the years.
The Confederation party, which is currently polling in the range of 7 percent, has promised that it will fight censorship by media corporations in Poland. It says that foreign media corporations and Big Tech are not being adequately policed and that this is a threat to Poland’s sovereignty.
Back in January, Facebook removed Confederation’s account from its service, resulting in the party losing its 700,000 followers. Facebook has since blocked other attempts by the party to reestablish its account under a different name. Facebook took these actions despite the fact that it had not contacted the party about any of the content on its Facebook page.
As a result, the Confederation party has proposed legislation against censorship on the internet and is in the process of taking legal action against Facebook.
