The media financed by Russia will have no place in Youtube. The digital video platform, the most important in the world, announced this Friday that it is blocking, with immediate effect and on a global scale, access to propaganda channels at the service of the Kremlin.
On March 1, YouTube announced that, in line with what is required by the European Union (EU), blocked the channels of the canal RT and the agency Sputnikconsidered an essential part of the machinery of disinformation Russian. Today, the platform owned by Google expands that restriction globally, which will further hit those outlets.
2/ In line with that, we are also now blocking access to YouTube channels associated with Russian state-funded media globally, expanding from across Europe. This change is effective immediately, and we expect our systems to take time to ramp up.
—YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) March 11, 2022
The video giant has detailed that since March 1 it has eliminated more than 1,000 channels and more than 15,000 videos for violating different content moderation policies, among which would be the dissemination of hoaxescalls to hate Yet the violence or the publication of graphic content about the war that Russia is waging on Ukraine.
Related news
In response to military invasion launched by Moscow, Youtube has already paused all ads on the platform in Russia. Just yesterday it extended this measure by announcing that it was suspending monetization for all Russian users.
The platform’s decision further tightens the rope between the Russian government of Vladimir Putin and the tech giants. Between the informational repression of the Kremlin and the boycott decisions themselves, these companies have already withdrawn from the country or limited their services Apple, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon or Netflix, among others. This Friday it has been confirmed that Moscow will ban the use of Instagram, the third most popular social network in Russia, due to the decision of Meta (its owner) to allow the publication of violent comments against Russian soldiers or its president.