Bitcoin Magazine’s official YouTube channel restored after short term ban
The YouTube channel of Bitcoin Magazine’s had been restored within about three hours following the shutdown, with the publication ascribing the shortlived ban to the YouTube algorithm that flagged the word “Kazakhstan.”
Through a tweet on January 12, Bitcoin Magazine has noted that its YouTube account having 56,600 followers had been banned with no prior warning from the platform while halfway through a livestream.
The tweet read:
“Our @YouTube with 60,000 followers just got BANNED mid-livestream with no warning. DELETED. When will the aggression against #Bitcoin content end?”
The livestream had focused on topics relating to Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Bitcoin mining, as well as the recent internet blackout in Kazakhstan that had reportedly been initiated by the government as a response to massive protests over surging fuel prices in the Central Asian nation.
Bitcoin Magazine had stated it wasn’t entirely sure on what grounds YouTube had banned its official channel, but it did confirm that its account was eventually restored an hour after its submission of the appeal, indicating that Youtube had realized its error.
In a live broadcast that happened after the reinstatement, host Alex Mcshane had noted that the panel had been discussing the internet blackout’s effect on the Bitcoin mining hash rate without having said anything controversial, but it was through using a set of “algorithmically and politically charged words” that may have triggered the automated shutdown.
Bitcoin Magazine had also shared a post earlier in the day noting the initial response from the Google-owned YouTube, with regards to the ban, stating that any content that encourages any kind of “illegal activities” or even “incites users to violate YouTube’s guidelines” is completely prohibited.
The response also added that the platform might allow depictions of any such activities only if they fall under the categories like “educational or documentary” and when they don’t help others to imitate or recreate those.
Despite YouTuve’s content policy, current searches on it are still yielding results that show multiple livestreams using the identity and video content of popular figures like MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, for promoting dodgy websites and apparent “crypto giveaway” scams.
Commenting on the ban on Reddit, inside the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit, user u/Setl1less has highlighted the hypocrisy, arguing that Youtube has now made it a part of its “habit of taking down prominent informative accounts” while it lets scams operate freely.
