Google’s YouTube recently censored a video posted by congressional candidate Laura Loomer, not by directly removing it, but by placing it into “Locked as Private” mode.
Loomer, who campaigned in 2020 for the House of Representatives in former President Donald Trump’s district of FL-21, said in a post on Gab on April 1 that Big Tech’s video arm had removed a 2018 video entitled “Why Does The Left Blame White People for Everything?” alleging it violated their violent or graphic content policy.
On March 30, Loomer was canceled by payment processor Stripe. She said the ban happened the same day she spoke with Florida lawmakers and Governor Ron DeSantis about the dangers of business cancel culture, especially with payment processors such as Stripe. “One of the amendments I told FL lawmakers that they need to add to the legislation is penalties for payment processors ie like Stripe banning people. Within minutes after announcing my speech, Stripe payment processing RETALIATED and BANNED ME,” she said on Gab.
Stripe also canceled Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol break-in.
On Loomer’s 2022 campaign website, she describes herself as a “Jewish Conservative investigative journalist and activist,” who spent two years working undercover with James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. The 27-year-old says she is “mostly known for her Guerrilla style journalism and often conducts ambush interviews on live stream, which is known as getting ‘LOOMERED’.”
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She says she has ‘LOOMERED’ names as big as Hillary Clinton, Alyssa Milano, Huma Abedin, and James Comey.
The notoriety she has gained has caused her to be banned from nearly every platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Lyft, Uber Eats, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Medium, and TeeSpring.
The ban from Stripe significantly affects her ability to raise contributions. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Loomer raised more than $2.2 million in her 2020 campaign run, which she lost to Democrat incumbent Lois Frankel, who raised slightly more than $1.5 million.
According to data, the bulk of Loomer’s contributions were in the $200 and under range, raising more than $1.3 million compared to Frankel’s $174,000, indicating a reliance on crowdfunding from private citizens, which may be heavily affected by Stripe’s ban.
Loomer lost to Frankel in the 2020 Election by a margin of 237,925 to 157,612 votes, according to New York Times.
In 2018, left wing non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) voiced its concerns about payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe using their ability to restrict the flow of funds as a form of censorship, “I’m deeply concerned that we’re letting banks and payment processors turn into de facto Internet censors,” an EFF spokesperson told Breitbart.
“These financial giants have little incentive to defend free expression online because it doesn’t impact their bottom line, and it’s often difficult or impossible for small websites to appeal decisions to shut down accounts or freeze payments.”
The spokesperson continued, “Policies by big financial institutions like Visa and Mastercard also influence the policies of other financial intermediaries — including payment processors and crowdfunding sites.”
“That means that speech-restrictive policies by just a handful of companies — especially Visa and Mastercard, and also PayPal to an extent — can make it difficult or impossible for some law-abiding websites to process payments or donations at all.”
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