Edit: as of about 3:00PM Eastern, Magoo’s Youtube account has been reinstated.  Victory.

from enturbulation.org:

Youtube is again censoring videos of Scientology critics. Tory Christman, former-Scientologist turned critic, has had her Youtube account suspended and videos removed due to “terms of use violations”.

If you’ve ever viewed one of her videos you probably have to ask, “is speaking out against Scientology now a ToS violation for Youtube?”

Apparently, so… this isn’t the first time a critic of the “Church” of Scientology has had their account suspended on Youtube. Previously, Emmy Award-winner Mark Bunker - also a long-time critic of the “Church” - had his account suspended, most likely due to efforts by the “church”.  Bunker’s videos have been since uploaded to Xenutv1.

How? Well, one can only guess, but the most logical reason is Scientology has been ordering their drones to flag / report videos and accounts of users who are critical of the church, most likely hiding behind their faux-religion status and crying wolf about hate speech.

Also, Youtube did continually bow to pressure from Scientology’s lawyers to remove the video of the Tom Cruise in his natural state. Youtube, sadly, didn’t take a page from Gawker’s playbook and claim that the video was newsworthy. Youtube also has previously removed (and later restored) videos by members of Anonymous which were posted to Youtube to galvanize protest support.

Censoring critics of information and religion? You’d think Google / Youtube would have a bit more backbone when it comes to things like this.

Even though this may in the short-term embolden Scientology, have they not learned anything over the last three months since this began? Do they know this will cause more backlash and critical talk about the “Church”?

Mark Bunker speaks about this:

Seems that Amazon is censoring user reviews when it comes to L. Ron Hubbard’s psychotic ramblings that mask as a self-help book… I’m talking about the reviews of Dianetics.  This is surprising, especially Amazon; at the same time it is not really.

When will they ever learn? You just can’t mess with the interbutts. First it was YouTube, who cowered in fear, when it suppressed free speech and fair use by pulling the leaked Tom Cruise Video, then it was Ebay allowing the Church of Scientology to yank post-consumer e-meters off its website, now it’s Amazon pulling negative reviews of Dianetics.

Just the usual tactics by the cult to mis-represent themselves and put their best face forward.  Though their best face has been getting worse and worse.

As we’ve seen over the last few months, the Cult of Scientology has been trying to silence dissent in the wake of the protests held outside its doors by Anonymous (there is another protest, Operation Reconnect, that will be held this Saturday, April 12).  The fall out from this should be rather interesting as Amazon’s responses seem to be a standard form mail and not specific to the actual content of the reviews.

I’m guessing this isn’t the first time Amazon has engaged in censorship of user reviews on their site.

In other Anonymous-related news, this is a pretty interesting article calling for academic study on just what has happened, from a sociological standpoint, over the last two months.

Anonymous presents an array of opportunities for interesting scholorship. It is a cultural community, a political movement, a legal battleground, and more. It straddles between internet and “real world” existence. We need to study Anonymous… and to study hard.