This month, YouTube announced a new slate of content policies that subjected “controversial religious or supremacist content" to additional restrictions, including hiding those videos from user recommendations. The policies did not explicitly mention any political ideology, but conspiracists at sites like Infowars and Breitbart cried foul, claiming that YouTube’s true intent was to stop the spread of right-wing views. One far-right journalist, Mike Cernovich, announced on Twitter that he was planning a protest outside Google’s offices.

“We’re just doing what the left has done for a while," Mr. Cernovich told me. “You use activist tactics to apply pressure to corporations, and the corporations respond."