Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is asking YouTube to "stop discriminating against conservative views" and restore lawful videos it removed, a Wednesday letter revealed.
The letter comes in the wake of YouTube removing several videos related to firearms, including one from licensed gun dealer Jason Schaller, who gave a tutorial on how to construct a gun legally.
"So long as YouTube acts hand-in-glove with federal politicians to repress constitutional rights, states will continue finding ways to reign in the power of Big Tech," Knudsen wrote.
"It is past time that you considered the consequences of those actions for your company's bottom line and withdrew your complicity from the trampling of rights disfavored by D.C. Democrats."
Schaller had written earlier this year to his U.S. senators from Montana, Democrat Jon Tester and Republican Steve Daines. In the document, Schaller requested "swift action" to restore the video upload.
He also condemned a February letter written by several Northeastern Democratic senators that urged YouTube to take action on so-called "ghost gun" content, of which the licensed dealer's content qualified.
"My whole thing is I'm not mad that YouTube took it down. I mean, I don't like YouTube's community guidelines. But I did violate it," Schaller told the Washington Examiner. "What I'm upset about is that five U.S. senators used Senate letterhead to take down videos that they didn't agree with.
"It's not the Senate's job to enforce policies of the private sector. Using Senate letterhead like that, you're getting into the thing of, did that actually violate our First Amendment rights because they engaged in censorship?"
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