In 2021 when YouTube announced it was censoring anti-vaccine content, Scott Clem had a vague sense of a brewing conspiracy and that something wasn’t right.
What the former Wyoming representative said on Facebook at the time, was that YouTube’s new policy was “the end of free speech.”
According to the information available at the time, he was wrong.
But under information that surfaced in the four years that followed, he may have been onto something.
Cowboy State Daily at the time pointed out, correctly, that private companies like YouTube are under no obligation to follow the First Amendment. That amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, restrains government.
What neither Cowboy State Daily nor Clem knew at the time has since been revealed: the administration of then-President Joe Biden was pressuring multiple social media platforms, including Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, to censor anti-vaccine content and election “misinformation.”
It was a football-spike moment for Clem, who is now a Campbell County Commissioner, when he learned Wednesday that Alphabet, the company overseeing YouTube and Google, had taken accountability one day earlier for caving to government pressure and vowed to change course.
Clem didn’t know in 2021 that the multi-platform censorship and suppression effort came after significant government pressure.
But he suspected it, he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
“At that time, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – those were kind of the big ones – they were all kind of marching to the same drumbeat,” said Clem. “That’s what struck me, is there was an obvious, coordinated effort on all these different platforms to essentially stifle free speech.”
A Tuesday letter from Alphabet counsel Daniel F. Donovan to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee says it has a commitment to free expression.
“This commitment is unwavering and will not bend to political pressure," the letter adds.
Senior Biden administration officials, including White House officials repeatedly reached out to Alphabet and pressured the company about user posts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic that didn’t violate the company’s content policies, the letter says.
Court documents reveal that the first Trump administration and, to a greater and more regular extent, the Biden administration, accessed tech platforms’ crowd-listening analytics.
“While the reliance on health authorities in this context was well-intentioned, the Company recognizes it should never come at the expense of public debate on these important issues,” says the letter.
YouTube gradually abandoned its censorship after the initial pressure campaign:
In 2023 the platform sunsetted its policy against discussions of possible widespread election fraud or glitches in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections. As of December 2024, it retired its remaining standalone COVID-19 policies and “allowed discussion of various treatments.”
Alphabet’s letter claims it has a “track record” of pushing back against inappropriate government demands for censorship.
The letter comes in response to months of demands and pressure from within a different branch of government, U.S. Congress’ GOP-led House Judiciary Committee.
It also comes after a January admission by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in which he said executive branch officials would scream and curse at Meta workers over content.
No Idea What To Do With This
Clem in 2021 said giant tech platforms should be regulated under the First Amendment, similar to the way monopolistic utilities are regulated to respect their users.
He wasn’t alone in reaching for a regulatory solution.
Harriet Hageman, who now serves as Wyoming’s lone U.S. House representative but in March 2021 was lobbying the legislature on behalf of New Civil Liberties Alliance, urged state lawmakers to do something about tech censorship.
Together with state Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, Hageman advocated a bill allowing $50,000 fines per-instance in civil penalties against tech platforms for censoring people based on “viewpoint.”
The Wyoming legislative House Judiciary Committee defeated that bill on a 6-3 vote, March 29, 2021.
State representatives who killed it said what publicly-available information showed at the time: the suppression effort was a private-company endeavor.
“My understanding is this is simply a matter of whether it is the public square or not,” said committee chair Rep. Jared Olsen, R-Cheyenne. “Are we saying that Facebook ought to be the public square?”
The bill was opposed by several internet organizations, such as NetChoice and the Internet Association, which also questioned the state’s ability to dictate to private businesses.
Mike Smith, a representative for the Internet Association, noted Wyoming’s Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not apply to private companies.
“This idea that the First Amendment applies to private property is kind of a dangerous one and one I wouldn’t want us to go down,” he said.
This Ain’t Over
Republican members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee magnified the Biden administration’s censorship efforts while overlooking Trump’s many wrongs in this space, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, indicated during a Feb. 12 meeting of the committee.
“Before, people were worried because some nameless, faceless bureaucrat would write a memo saying there’s election disinformation (on social media); it needs to be corrected,” said Raskin. “And they thought that was a First Amendment violation although the courts ended up rejecting that.”
A lawsuit on the matter is still pending, but suffered a major setback when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2024 that the plaintiffs originally lacked standing.
“They didn’t like the government even warning of factual disinformation,” Raskin continued, referencing his Republican colleagues.
But it was more troubling, he continued, when Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), became a top Trump advisor and started reforming the government, said Raskin.
“Now we’ve got an absolute merger of the social media state with the traditional government apparatus,” said Raskin. He pointed to reported censorship campaigns by both Musk and Trump toward journalists. “Not sure what my colleagues’ position is, on whether there should be free speech on social media sites.”
Musk’s service in the Trump administration was short-lived. The pair had a public falling-out around the time Musk posted a June 7 announcement to X, alleging that Trump is in the Epstein files.
This, Too
But, Clem told Cowboy State Daily, people should still be vigilant to defend freedom of speech no matter which party is in power.
He said he’s opposed to the Federal Communication Commission chair’s pressure campaign to oust comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who made disfavored jokes about Trump and his followers in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s gunshot death.
Trump after Kimmel's comments said broadcasters "maybe" should lose their licenses, as they “give me only bad publicity or press." His FCC chair said Kimmel's comments could prompt government action.
Now with Kimmel's show back on the air, Trump is threatening to sue ABC News.
Clem also opposes U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s vow to crack down on “hate speech” in the wake of that controversy.
“Hate speech” is not among the few exceptions to the First Amendment’s promise of free speech.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
