YouTube/Censorship

YouTube/Censorship (Internet/Censorship)
Interest of	• AltCensored • Project Veritas • Reclaim The Net

YouTube Censorship has accelerated since the "Fake News" meme was launched in 2016. In 2018 Mike Adams registered https://www.youtubecensorship.com to begin reporting on it.

Policy

YouTube requires users sign in to view some content, a form of soft censorship

After his channel was deleted, Sayed Hasan charged that "Youtube strives to hide its censorship behind a pseudo-legalistic procedure." Soft censorship tactics include labelling content as age inappropriate, i.e. requiring users to sign in before viewing it.

Timeline

2019

In Summer 2019 YouTube announced new policies to bad any videos "alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion." This policy took effect immediately. Google CEO clarified that would also target borderline "content which doesn't exactly violate policies".

"a human check to make sure that the content that’s there makes sense"

In December 2019, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki admitted what had long been surmised, that the "trending" content on YouTube was subject to human censorship. She stated that “We just do a human check to make sure that the content that’s there makes sense to be on the Trending page and available for everyone”, but did not elaborate further.

"no longer commercially viable"

"YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable."

Disabling search filtering

For over a week after the Christchurch Mass Shooting, the filtering features on Youtube were disabled. Youtube later admitted that it had deliberately made it harder to find certain videos.

"content that could misinform users..."

YouTube said it would be making changes to its recommendations algorithm to explicitly deal with "conspiracy theory" videos. The company says the update will reduce the suggestion of “borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways.” YouTube clarified what kind of videos fit that description by providing three examples: “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.” The company clarified that this content doesn’t necessarily violate its community guidelines. This means that while the content may still exist on YouTube, the site’s algorithm will omit these videos from being recommended to its users.

2018

In 2018, of Sayed Hasan criticised YouTube after it removed his channel on December 2017. This has had 400 videos and over 6 million views, "subtitled in French and English speeches of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah", explaining that it was a “violation of the rules concerning violent or graphic content on Youtube”. This contrasts with its acceptance of Donald Trump's threat to “completely destroy” North Korea "or the Israeli bragging about bombing Iran and toppling its regime, assassinating Hassan Nasrallah".

In February 2018, Youtube removed a video of an eyewitness to the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, stating that it "violates our guidelines". Also in February the channel of Richie Allen was removed for interviews he did with Wolfgang Halbig and Michael Rivero with a third strike pending.

In March 2018, YouTube removed all 1700+ videos from Mike Adams' "Health Ranger" channel, claiming that the videos, covering nutrition, natural medicine, history, science and current events violated their guidelines.

Mark Crispin Miller reports in December 2018 that YouTube had removed a video of Mort Sahl speaking about the JFK Assassination.

2017

In 2017, YouTube allegedly censored content more swiftly than Facebook or Twitter, deleting 90% of flagged videos within 24 hours.

"Worsening pattern of censorship of political speech"

Prompted by the removal of a video he had posted about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Mike Adams reported in December 2017 on "the worsening pattern of censorship of political speech by YouTube."

2016

In 2016, YouTube announced that making "negative comments" about someone else and hurting their feelings might be considered sufficient grounds for the to censor content. The political commentator Gabe Zolna, who had some very caustic remarks towards Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US election, had his channel with 18,300 videos and sometimes tens of thousands of views the same year removed with strikes in short succession.

 

An example

Page name	Description
Demonetization	A deep state weapon?

 

YouTube/Censorship victims on Wikispooks

Title	Description
Jair Bolsonaro	President of Brazil who publicly refused a COVID-19 jab and suggested that the virus may have been intentionally created and released.
Dave Cullen	Irish Youtuber and political dissident.
Patrick Lancaster	Former US Navy sailor living in Donbass who covered the war since the beginning.
Matt Orfalea	American video blogger
Rand Paul

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Integrity Initiative/Leak/3	“Find ways to remove e.g. RT/Ruptly video and infographic content from corporate media e.g. newspaper websites, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Such content is quite professionally done, entertaining and cheap (or even free) for cash-strapped corporate media outlets. But for these reasons, this kind of content gets numerous ‘clicks’ and is therefore picked up by reputable outlets that help spread Russian disinformation.”	Victor Madeira	16 March 2018

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