Tag: youtube

After Cheerleading Censorship for Years, WaPo Now On Receiving End of It, And They’re Pissed

In 2017, the Washington Post made an announcement that they are making their newspaper’s slogan to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” This slogan, while true, was incredibly ironic and hypocritical as the newspaper has long championed the censorship of their political rivals. If only one side of an argument is allowed to be heard, this is hardly democracy, yet it is the policy of those at the WaPo.

Not to long after proclaiming that democracy dies in the darkness, the WaPo waged a massive campaign of censorship symbolically blowing out candles to ensure their political rivals “die in darkness.” It started with Alex Jones and a hit piece calling for his removal from social media titled “Facebook Wants To Cut Down On Misinformation. So Why Isn’t It Doing Anything About InfoWars”

But even before they changed their motto, WaPo had long championed censorship and they had no problem using lies to achieve these means. In 2016, the Free Thought Project was brought up in the WaPo, who claimed — with zero evidence — that we were part of a Russian propaganda effort to “spread fake news” during the election.

Citing the now-heavily discredited “think tank” known as Prop or Not, the post claimed TFTP and dozens of other news media websites “got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy.”

Clearly no one cared to look at our articles at the time which criticized both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What’s more, despite being completely disproven and despite the entire ‘Russian meddling’ narrative crashing into ashes earlier this month, the article remains up on their website. 

WaPo’s calls for censoring their political rivals are as numerous as they are scandalous and continue this very day. Just this week, WaPo published a piece demanding that Big Tech immediately censor anyone who challenges the establishment’s narrative on climate change.

The WaPo has even gone so far as to push for modifying the actual First Amendment’s provision for free speech. Yes, they advocated for changing the very constitution of the United States to remove speech they didn’t like. Of course this was done in the vein of “preventing hate speech” but they completely ignored the inevitable effects of such lunacy.

“Yes, the First Amendment protects the “thought that we hate,” but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another,” the article read.

But there are already laws on the books against inciting violence toward others. Not to mention, the WaPo has long pushed “hateful speech” that incites violence against groups with which they disagree. In fact, just last year, the paper took a page straight out of the Nazi propaganda playbook which was used to demonize Jews and used it to dehumanize Trump supporters — as rats who should be exterminated.

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YouTube hosts HUNDREDS of ‘disgusting’ videos showing baby monkeys being tortured & killed

Animal rights campaigners have repeatedly lobbied the world’s largest video sharing network to act and remove the videos. But a simple search of “torture baby monkey” still showed up hundreds of results this evening, Express.co.uk can reveal.

Some videos warned viewers that the video “may be inappropriate for some users” but still allows people to click through.

Among numerous videos available on the site this evening, one called “Tortured Primates” showed a monkey being electrocuted to death.

Another sickening clip was entitled “Terrified infant monkeys, ripped from their mothers’ arms” and showed an incredibly distressed baby primate being abused.

Meanwhile a third called “Monkeys Abused and Teased” had been live for two months and had garnered 40,000 views in that time.

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Google And YouTube Will Demonetize Content Denying ‘Scientific Consensus’ On Climate Change

Google and YouTube announced a new policy Thursday demonetizing all content that denies the scientific consensus on climate change.

Google will no longer allow ads for “content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” the company announced in a support page added to its website Thursday. The policy, which Google will start enforcing next month, covers YouTube videos and websites that treat climate change as a “hoax or a scam,” content “denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming” and content “denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.”

The search giant said it was implementing the policy due to pressure from advertisers, who didn’t want their products associated with content promoting climate denial.

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YouTube will now ban misinformation on all common vaccines, not just those for COVID-19

YouTube is now blocking several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists like Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy, and banning any videos that claim “commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous,” The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The video platform had previously blocked misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, but not videos that made erroneous or misleading claims about vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox, per the Post.

YouTube Vice President of Global Trust and Safety Matt Halprin said the company did not act sooner because of its myopic focus on COVID-19 vaccines. Its ban was expanded when YouTube realized misinformation regarding other vaccines was contributing to that regarding the COVID vaccine. “Developing robust policies takes time,” said Halprin.

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New study further debunks “far-right” rabbit hole YouTube narrative

YouTube uses algorithms to suggest videos depending on what you watch. There have been many stories about how YouTube’s recommendation algorithms have “radicalized” people by populating their viewings with a specific subject, particularly when the subjects are “conspiracy theories.”

Yet, these accusations have been accused of being a “conspiracy theory” themselves as several studies have debunked such claims.

A new study published Monday further suggests that video recommendations on YouTube do not radicalize people.

The study focused on whether the alleged radicalization is anecdotal or represented an undeniable trend. The results of the study do not rule out the existence of radicalization through social media. However, it does strongly suggest that this radicalization is not at all common.

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YouTube suspends Sky News Australia in brazen and “disturbing” censorship

Sky News Australia, one of Australia’s most popular broadcasters, has been suspended from posting new content to YouTube for a week due to a supposed violation of YouTube’s guidelines on the spread of COVID-19 “misinformation.”

YouTube does not allow any video that conflicts with local health authorities or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical advice, although it does appear to be depending on who the “offender” is as to whether YouTube censors a video or channel.

Violations on YouTube are subject to a “three strikes” policy, with the first resulting in a one-week suspension, a second strike within 90 days leading to a two-week ban, and a third strike resulting in permanent removal from the site.

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YouTube complies with CNN copyright claim, censors leaked footage

YouTube has removed a recent video from investigative reporting outlet Project Veritas that featured leaked clips from an unreleased CNN documentary where Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses her experience of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

In the clips, Ocasio-Cortez agreed with Bash’s assertion that she thought she was going to be raped and killed during the events of January 6. She also claimed that “misogyny” and “racism” “animated that attack on the Capitol,” that “white supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways” and that “there’s a lot of sexualizing of that violence.”

Project Veritas criticized Bash’s questioning style, and noted that Ocasio-Cortez was not in the Capitol building when some of the CNN footage in the documentary was taped.

As with many of Project Veritas’ videos, this video featuring clips from the leaked CNN documentary was an instant hit and racked up tens of thousands of views in its first few hours.

But a few hours after it went live, YouTube blocked it after a copyright claim from “Turner CNN.”

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YouTube censors New Jersey Senate hearing about kids’ mask mandates

As YouTube continues to censor a wide array of topics, not least those around the Covid pandemic, so it’s independent competitors like Rumble continue to attract more creators.

The trend was unbroken last week when Google’s video giant censored a video showing a New Jersey Senate hearing on the topic of forcing school children to wear masks, which concluded the policy may be harmful.

New Jersey-based talk show host and former chair of the College Republican National Committee Bill Spadea announced this, accusing the Democratic majority in the state’s capital, Trenton, of shunning the official event, and YouTube of eventually “not liking” the content of the discussion, and for that reason removing the video.

However, as Spadea explained, the video can still be found on his new channel on Rumble.

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YouTube reverses censorship of journalist Alison Morrow who highlighted YouTube pro-corporate media bias

YouTube censored and suspended the channel of independent journalist Alison Morrow after she posted a video highlighting several examples of the mainstream media violating the “medical misinformation” rules that are regularly used by the tech giant to punish independent creators on the platform.

After facing mounting backlash over the decision, YouTube reinstated the video.

In the now reinstated video, which is titled “Corporate news can break YouTube’s rules” and features Matt Orfalea (an independent video producer who was recently censored by YouTube for highlighting YouTube censorship), Morrow highlighted two examples of corporate news channels violating YouTube’s medical misinformation policy.

The first example showed a February 2020 clip from the NBC News YouTube channel where one of the presenters states: “Experts caution, masks are not always the answer.” Another presenter states: “If you’re sick or somebody in the family’s sick, then doctors say the mask is an effective way to prevent that virus from spreading, but in a public place, not so much.”

The second example showed a March 2020 clip from the CNN YouTube channel where its Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta discusses the coronavirus and says “there’s some solace in this idea that the vast majority of people aren’t going to get sick from this” and “this is reminding people, I think a little bit, of, of, just flu in general.”

Morrow noted that both of these corporate news clips violate YouTube’s current medical “misinformation” policy but have not been removed with the first clip violating the rule that prohibits claims “claims that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19” and the second clip violating the rule that prohibits “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.”

She also emphasized that YouTube’s medical misinformation policy is antithetical to the purpose of both science and journalism:

“How is science not always going to be medical misinformation, if science is the very practice of discovering new things? It’s just impossible to do science on YouTube or journalism for that matter. You can’t really do journalism on YouTube unless you’re a corporate entity because obviously journalism is also about questioning narratives and proposing new ideas and you can’t do that if the community guidelines are all about protecting the status quo.”

Morrow then suggested that the purpose of YouTube’s medical misinformation policy is to create “a cast of safe characters that are basically part of the same corporate class as YouTube” and notes that “you could even be saying the exact same thing the corporate news is saying” and still “face the consequences that they are not going to face.”

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YouTube caught auto-censoring some comments that criticize China’s propaganda pushers (again)

Last year, YouTube was caught auto-censoring several phrases that criticized “wumao” (五毛) – a phrase describing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) internet propaganda division the “50 Cent Army” which is a reference to members of this propaganda division reportedly being paid 50 cents per post.

YouTube responded by claiming “this was an error in our enforcement systems and we are working to fix it as quickly as possible.”

Now, just over a year later, Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has reported that YouTube was again censoring a phrase that criticized wumao for influencing YouTube censorship operations.

Reclaim The Net tested this phrase in the YouTube comments section and it was briefly auto-censored within seconds of being posted.

However, after YouTube was questioned about the practice and after Luckey retweeted a post from another Twitter user who tagged Congressman Jim Banks and shared their experience of the word “Wumao” being censored in the YouTube comments section, YouTube appeared to reverse the censorship.

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