Steve Deace is a Blaze Media pundit and host of his namesake podcast which is top 25, give or take, in Conservative Inc. Last week, 16 Republican state Attorney Generals signed a letter demanding that YouTube answer for its censorship of Steve Deace. But the premise of the letter is false.
Eras of YouTube
Between 2020 and 2022, YouTube removed at least four of episodes of The Steve Deace Show from its platform because of speech critical of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the integrity of the 2020 election. YouTube’s metrics show that The Steve Deace Show experienced explosive growth on YouTube in 2020. Toward the end of 2021, YouTube removed two of his videos. This precipitated a sharp fall in views and impressions in 2022. During the same period (2022), the show experienced significant growth on other platforms, such as Apple Podcasts. This strongly suggests that YouTube shadowbanned or otherwise limited the visibility of The Steve Deace Show. YouTube appears to have silently censored his channel even when content was not alleged to have violated the site’s terms, censoring that seems to be continuing.
Pre-2019, one could really grow a channel and ride the algorithm to success in a variety of fields on YouTube. But then, with characters like Steven Crowder facing demonitization, YouTube entered its censorship era under Susan Wojcicki, who was Jewish, and she heavy handily cracked down on right-wing content, specifically on anti-gay, anti-lockdown, and election denial. After her resignation in February 2023, YouTube’s censorship has relaxed considerably. This leadership change coincides with why none of Deace’s community guidelines violations were in 2023 or more recently.
Political Intrigue
Although 16 state Attorney Generals signed the letter, Iowa and Texas lead the charge. Steve Deace is based in Iowa, so the local connection makes sense. But Ken Paxton has lent his letterhead to the cause.
Deace’s good friend Chip Roy is running for Paxton’s position, while Paxton runs for the Senate, where he currently has a lead over incumbent John Cornyn in primary polling. This is an easy political courtesy to shore up Deace’s support, even though Chip Roy is a rival to Ken Paxton in Texas politics.
Debunking The Central Claim
Deace’s lawyers assert that the censorship is ongoing, and while the community guideline violations of the past were censorship, it is evident that there is no shadowban on either of Deace’s channels.
Steve Deace’s original channel had 52.1k subs before he abandoned it completely in September 2024. Using the 10% views/subscriber ratio, of his last ten videos, only 3 did not exceed this threshold. So the other 70% of his videos were successful. Something else to factor is that Deace’s original channel was almost entirely uploads of his 95 minute show. So for him to achieve a standard YouTube benchmark consistently on longform content is good. Deace’s original channel, therefore, showed no signs of being censored.
Deace’s new channel sits at 21.3K subs. All of its recent videos appear to be successful, per the aforementioned benchmark and with fewer subs. This channel was also not struck in 2020-2022. A notable difference is the content distribution by Blaze TV, which is perhaps boosting Deace’s channel. The effects of these cross-channel videos and streams is risky in how it impacts a channel, because prioritizing the view count of videos could come at a cost. Nevertheless, there is no sign that Deace’s new channel is being censored. And I would further argue he should never have quit the old one.
Also mentioned in the letter are BlazeTV, The Daily Wire, and CPAC Plus. Both Blaze TV and The Daily Wire brand channels feature content from other talents. These channels are not destinations for users. CPAC is a channel that features videos from the conference, and apparently no one cares about CPAC in 2026, if their channel is any indication. These channels are not being censored. They are simply not optimized for YouTube.
Steve Deace was putting out longform content (95 minutes long) and meeting industry benchmarks. I suspect he successfully migrated his audience onto YouTube, but his channel struggled to grow a YouTube audience. This is why shortform content is key for channel growth, something Deace’s new channel does sporadically when every episode should be clipped for ease of consumption, much like his peer Jason Whitlock does on his channels.
Conclusions
Far be it from a lowly 9750 sub YouTuber to tell a professional how to do his job, but it’s clear that the people signing onto this letter do not understand YouTube and how to grow a channel or what drives video views (new subscribers). One has to wonder how Deace’s struggle sessions and Zionism play on YouTube, where even Ben Shapiro is losing audience. YouTube is anti-zionist, even more than X, judging by various comment sections. Big Tech censorship is a known factor in any media business, but there are times when it is not present and is merely an excuse for people performing below expectations.
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