YouTube Deletes Videos Exposing YouTube Hypocrisy
YouTube censorship is ramping up. I’ve been uploading YouTube videos for 15 years and never received a single strike or warning from the platform, until last month. All of a sudden, YouTube removed 7 of my videos within 30 days and demonetized my entire channel, based on allegations that still make no sense.
On June 15, I was banned from uploading, posting, and live-streaming for one week. YouTube accused me of spreading “misinformation” with private rough cuts of my video, “YouTube CENSORED the Senate”, that I’d already deleted myself. The final public version was never taken down, and remains on YouTube.
July 6, YouTube demonetized my entire channel, accusing me of involvement with “violent criminal organizations” due to a 7 year old Starbucks commercial parody. The video featured a clip of the Isla Vista killer, Elliot Rodger, sitting in a car promoting a Starbucks drink. “Elliot Rodger here, enjoying a nice vanilla latte.”
I added a graphic saying, “Starbucks. Insanely overpriced beverages, for psychopaths.”
After the story gained attention on Twitter, YouTube admitted they’d made an “error”.
When fellow independent journalist, Alison Morrow, interviewed me about the censorship I was experiencing on YouTube, YouTube deleted her video, accusing it of spreading “misinformation”. But the only clips in the video that could be interpreted as violating YouTube’s policy belonged to CNN and NBC.
Moreover, we didn’t endorse the NBC and CNN clips in any way. Instead, we showed how the clips violate YouTube’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation policy”. So when YouTube deleted Morrow’s video, titled “Corporate news can break YouTube's rules”, while not removing the offending NBC and CNN videos, they proved our point perfectly.
Matt Taibbi detailed the news clips in his last episode of “Meet the Censored”:
One showed NBC reporter Tom Costello saying that masks are useful if you’re sick or someone in your family is sick, but “in a public place, not so much.” This seemed to conflict with Google’s rule against “claims that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.”
The other video showed CNN’s Sanjay Gupta saying of coronavirus news, “It shouldn’t alarm [people] that much,” and “the vast majority of people aren’t going to get sick.” Gupta also made the same observation Trump did, comparing Covid-19 to influenza: “This has reminded people of flu a little bit.” This would seem to be a violation of YouTube’s rule against “Claims that the symptoms, death rates, or contagiousness of COVID-19 are less severe or equally as severe as the common cold or seasonal flu.”
They were old clips, but as YouTube demonstrated with the Elliot Rodger episode, oldness is no defense. YouTube moved swiftly, banning/removing Morrow’s video on the grounds that it constituted “misinformation.”
Despite the patently false pretense that Morrow promoted “medical misinformation,” YouTube quickly denied her appeal. I recorded a video with Morrow, titled “YouTube BANS Reporter Exposing YouTube Hypocrisy,” explaining YouTube’s mistake removing her video. And once again, after the story gained attention on Twitter, YouTube reversed their decision. But after Morrow’s video was reinstated, YouTube deleted my video defending Morrow.
Luckily, the video is backed up on Odysee so anyone can see for themselves that I did not violate any of YouTube’s guidelines. Presumably, it was removed because it included the same CNN and NBC clips as Morrow’s previously deleted video.
Unfortunately, the only way to get YouTube to correct their errors is to generate sufficient public outrage to get their attention. Otherwise, the second largest search engine in the world (owned by the largest search engine in the world) remains disturbingly unaccountable.
