YouTube blocked 9 thousand channels, where the war was called "special operation"

Over the three months of the war, YouTube has blocked more than 9 thousand channels that illuminate the war. More than 70 thousand videos did not go through the moderation of the platform due to misinformation about the war in Ukraine. It is reported by The Guardian.

Channels related to the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Affairs of Russia were temporarily forbidden to upload videos for describing the war as a “liberation mission”. Moderators also do not allow to call it a special operation. The channels of journalist Vladimir Solovyov and the “experts”, as well as the channels of Russia Today and Sputnik are blocked.

“We have a policy regarding the denial and distortion of large tragedies: from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And, of course, what is happening in Ukraine is a great tragedy. And therefore we used this policy to take unprecedented actions,” the company Director of Products Neil Mohan explained. According to him, the pro -Kremlin bloggers are mainly blocked.

The last video on the channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense was published three weeks ago, although before that the videos were published at least every week. In the last video, the department calls for them to subscribe to them in Telegram and Rutub.

The representative of the company added that YouTube’s news content about the war in Ukraine gained more than 40 million views, and the audience of authoritative channels has grown significantly due to users from Ukraine and Poland and from Russia itself.

• YouTube has about 90 million users in Russia. Last week, the Russian Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev said that they are not going to block the platform, although multimillion -dollar fines are imposed on Google for the failure of prohibited information, including YouTube.
• META in Russia has already been recognized as extremist for the failure of the information banned in the country, and its Facebook and Instagram are blocked.