Big Tech Moderators Aren't Promoting Pedophilia
The Claim
Big tech is removing religious content while protecting satanists and pedophiles.
News posted on
Emerging story
In March, 2021, a suspicious source named Napa Legal published a white paper titled De-Platforming: The Threat Facing Faith Based Organizations. The paper claimed that a range of big tech organizations such as Facebook, Twitter and Amazon were deplatforming a range of religious organizations.
The Wall Street Journal then used this report in an opinion article that highlighted the potential censorship to a wider audience. Shortly after this piece was published, a range of conspiracy websites twisted this claim, stating that big tech was
censoring religious content while protecting satanism and pedophilia.
Misbar’s Analysis
Napa Legal, who published the claims, is a misleading source. Despite its name, it is not a law firm. Instead, it claims to provide education that protects and advances the mission of faith based nonprofits. It is also a sister organization of the Napa Institute, which some have criticized for not following Christian ideals.
This makes the claims in Napa Legal’s white paper suspicious. Additionally, many of the supposed instances of religious censorship in the white paper are difficult to prove. For instance, the paper highlights that Justice Clarence Thomas’s documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words, was removed from Amazon. However, the reason for this removal is likely not due to religious censorship but for another reason, such as a rights issue.
The paper also highlights an American professor, Robert A. J. Gagnon, who was banned from Facebook for 24 hours for making a comment that the site defined as hate speech. Whether the initial post counts as hate speech is debatable, but the post that caused the ban appears to have been about transgender rights, not religion.
The articles which state that the big tech companies are protecting pedophiles use a variety of sources as evidence. However, they do not fit the definition of protecting pedophilia. One incident used as a evidence that tech companies promote pedophilia is Netflix’s promotion of the movie Cuties. However, Netflix did remove a suggestive promotional image of the child cast members, showing that the subject matter is subject to censorship. The sources also ignore that Cuties is a documentary that uses its subject matter to criticize the sexualization of children, which is the opposite of promoting pedophilia.
The sources also claim that tech companies protect Satanism. For this, they provide no context to support or elaborate on these claims. They also fail to note that Satanism can itself be considered a religion.
