WATCH: CNN's Kirsten Powers Hilariously Leveled When She Talks About Censoring Republicans

As RedState’s Becca Lower reported, YouTube — after taking down tens of thousands of videos that it termed “misinformation” regarding the results of the 2020 election — is now doing an about-face.

The Google-owned service, in an unsigned blog post Friday, tried to explain it this way: “In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.”

YouTube also noted, “As with any update to our policies, we carefully deliberated this change.”

Looking towards the 2024 election season that is just getting underway, the company wrote:

“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society — especially in the midst of election season.”

Well-said. Now. But it was also true for the entire time they were removing videos over the last three years. And now they want to try to make up with people and pretend they care about free speech? Sorry if I don’t believe it. They took a political side and now they can’t roll it back.

Even with this change, they’re still leaving some wiggle room to go after things.

….YouTube said its other election misinformation policies remain in place, including those that prohibit content “aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting” as well as false claims that could “materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail” and videos that encourages others to interfere with “democratic processes.”

They’re also saying you’ll see authoritative sources featured prominently, and that also sounds like something where they could be making political decisions, as Lower explained.

The curious thing is, why are they suddenly flipping and doing this now? Part of it is the positive influence of Twitter. It’s an attempt to stop the bleeding as people flee control to a more inviting and freer environment on Elon Musk’s platform.

A number of political shows and podcasts have announced their intention to upload on Twitter alongside, or even in place of, Youtube. This new move by Youtube may be intended to stem the bleeding.

Source:

https://t.co/u5QM3vi4fV https://t.co/2IMmmVapCu

— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) June 4, 2023

That’s a positive thing for free speech all around.

But CNN host Kirsten Powers couldn’t seem to deal with it.

WATCH: CNN’s Kirstin Powers calling for the complete censorship of Republicans’ speech. pic.twitter.com/x5jLqA1cg7

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 3, 2023

“And so, if the problem is that, ‘Oh, people aren’t going to be able to upload things that Republicans are saying,’ maybe Republicans should stop saying it, right? Is that not the solution to the problem?” Powers declared.

Way to go all in for censorship on Republicans, Kirsten. People who are concerned about being censored should just shut up. Don’t upload what they have to say and that will make them stop saying it, and we will only have the narrative that we like to hear? And CNN wonders why Chris Licht has been having trouble turning CNN around into a credible network when he has hosts saying things like this. Maybe such episodes are one of the reasons the network continues to melt down and Licht’s position is now in great question.

Powers did try to clean up what she said, but she didn’t help herself.

So, I think that — look, I support free speech, and I don’t think we want to silence political speech. But this company does have responsibility. And that’s not a violation of free speech to say, “We’re not going to allow you to upload information that is demonstrably false.”

Who gets to determine what is “false” there, Kirsten? That’s always a danger when you go from just being a platform to trying to police speech.

Why did 2020 election questions from Republicans get censored, yet all the Democrats floating election denialism in 2016 never did? It’s because the people behind liberal media had no problem with that kind of speech from Dems.

But Steve Guest, who was Sen. Ted Cruz’s Special Advisor for Communications, had a hilarious response to Powers’ remarks — a little reminder of her past when she had more sense.