Although YouTube has removed multiple policies related to COVID-19, opening up more of what people can talk about on YouTube with regards to COVID, they are still censoring accurate information in a perplexing manner. Well, I guess only perplexing if you don’t consider that YouTube’s policies and actions have no pattern nor follow their own policies.
When you get a strike on YouTube it stays on your record for 3 months. Get 3 strikes in a 3 month time period or less and your account is gone. Our last strike was 3 months ago. It has JUST fallen off our record, and then like clockwork, YouTube hands us a bogus strike for a piece of content we put out… almost 3 months ago.
On August 22nd I released Part 1 of a 2 part series when Dr. Madhava Setty and I examined CDC data and Pfizer trial data to give an overview of how successful trials were, what they stated about adverse events, and how effective the trials were. The idea here was to simply use the CDC and Pfizer data and put it into laymen’s terms for people to understand how COVID vaccines got approved.
Our goal was to remove as much hyperbole from the vaccine discussion as possible, and simply deal with facts so people could decide for themselves what happened. During the 2 parts, we did not make any claims or offer any advice, we just broke down the available information.
On October 27th we received the dreaded email from YouTube stating our content had been removed for violating their medical misinformation policy.
Notice of content removalAs per standard practice, because we have never in the history of our time on YouTube broken a YouTube policy, I appealed. Keep in mind, I’ve read YouTube’s policies many times over. We have had a total of 5 strikes on YouTube, including complete account deletion for three months. Eventually, our account was given back with sincere apologies from YouTube claiming they had made a mistake and the strikes we received, as well as account deletion, was an error.
As far as I can tell, all 5 strikes were not justified. Some were on videos that had nothing to do with COVID yet were deleted because they were about COVID – go figure.
Appealing on YouTube is a tough one to figure out. We have had appeals work twice out of 7 times. When you appeal a strike YouTube claims they review the content and determine more clearly if it goes against their policies.
Why I say it’s tough to figure out is, sometimes you get a response back in minutes from YouTube saying “rejected” when it’s impossible they even watched the content. So is it automated? On the other had, on two occasions they “reviewed” and determined nothing in our videos went against their policies, boom, content back and strikes gone.
But then you have the other 5 times, including this new one, that our content was removed after apparent reviews. The content doesn’t go against any policy they have, and it’s almost impossible to even place what policy it would refer to as their wording is pretty clear.
This is what leads you to believe that either they are just trying to censor ideas, control narratives, or their review teams are completely incompetent. YouTube censors also don’t tell you what was actually wrong with your video. So it’s not like they are clearly stating what the problem is or what line should have been removed etc, it’s vague and in our experience never makes sense.
Here was the response after YouTube’s apparent review:
YouTube claiming they reviewed our content after an appeal.In the 2nd part of the video they removed, we simply looked at how the CDC and FDA were making claims that were double standards. We would lay out their first claim, then the second and simply show how it was a double standard. Their words, not ours.
So we have government agencies doing things that make no sense, and people are not allowed to say anything about it? To those that have been paying attention the last couple of years, this is not a shock, but to those that might be curious about what is going on with online censorship, this may open your eyes a bit.
Never in our past has it been OK to allow government, big business and big Pharma to take any action they like without the option for critique from the public and qualified individuals. Now though, people are not only OK with it, they are welcoming it.
The challenge here is, while alternative platforms like Rumble, Odysee, and BitChute exist where people can post censored material, these platforms are not public squares – they don’t get many viewers in general, not to mention ones that are of different opinions.
In that sense YouTube is the world’s video based public square and therefore plays an important role in public dialogue – no matter how much you hate it.
I myself would love to see other platforms catch on and people leave YouTube in the hundreds of millions, but it isn’t happening, leaving YouTube as a very important platform in this moment.
So while the cries of “leave Youtube!” continue, they don’t make sense. It would be like trying to talk to a townhall of people while staying in your living room – the people in your town won’t hear you!
This also deeply adds to how unfair the journalistic landscape is at the moment. Mainstream channels never get banned for weeks at a time, feeling safe to do whatever they like. But independents, who have a fraction of the budgets already, are put at an even greater disadvantage by being treated unfairly and having to walk on eggshells all the time.
Our channel comes back on November 4th.
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