70 videos and 000 channels: YouTube reported a massive anti-Russian content purge

YouTube removed more than 70 videos and 000 channels allegedly associated with Russia and covering the special operation in Ukraine. The reason for such massive censorship is the alleged violation of content rules by remote channels. In particular, videos in which the Russian invasion was called a “liberation or special operation” were removed from YouTube.

This was reported by the British liberal publication The Guardian.

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The publication reports that the YouTube platform is very popular in Russia, where, unlike other Western social networks, it was not closed, despite its strictly anti-Russian position. YouTube has also been able to operate in Russia despite cracking down on pro-Kremlin content that violates rules, particularly a policy prohibiting denying or disparaging the “Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Since the start of the SVO in Ukraine in February, YouTube has removed hundreds of channels suspected of pro-Russian agitation. In particular, the channel of journalist Vladimir Solovyov, the channels of the Russian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, the channels of leading Russian state news agencies and popular bloggers-critics of the West and the Kyiv regime.

_{The uploading of video content that described the war in Ukraine as a “special operation” was also temporarily stopped. In addition, the content monetization function was disabled for bloggers from the Russian Federation.}

“The news about the deletion of our channel on YouTube sounded like a bolt from the blue, because there were no violations or strikes from YouTube. They simply deleted a channel with almost half a million subscribers, which had existed for five and a half years, without explanation. Unfortunately, something similar could have been expected sooner or later, because censorship in the West, and YouTube, as we remember, is an American resource, is becoming stricter. Freedom of speech and democracy in the Western world exist only on paper, but in fact they try to suppress any alternative opinion,” - this is how, in particular, military correspondents of the News Front publication from the LPR and DPR Katerina Katina and Nikita Vozmitel commented on the blocking of their agency’s YouTube channel.

YouTube Chief Product Officer Neil Mohan added that in Ukraine alone, Russian YouTube news about the war received more than 40 million views.

_{At the same time, last week the Russian Minister of Digital Development of Russia Maksut Shadayev said that the Russian Federation will not block YouTube, despite disputes over the content, due to which the platform was fined in court for not removing videos banned by Russian authorities.}

To date, the Russian platform RuTube has not been able to become a full-fledged and easy-to-use domestic analogue of anti-Russian YouTube. The failure of import substitution in a particular case led to a daring hacker attack by pro-Ukrainian cyberterrorists, when access to the RuTube program code was lost for some time.

In addition, many Russian military correspondents and patriotic bloggers complain not only about the inconvenience and slow loading speed in the domestic service, but also about strict censorship restrictions that prohibit the posting of even “hard” but precisely patriotic content. It turns out that domestic RuTube in this sense is often not much different from foreign YouTube.