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China Youtube Censorship

YouTube Criticized For Removing Videos Documenting China's Persecution of Uighur Muslims (reuters.com) 130

Posted by EditorDavid from the vanished-videos dept.
"A human rights group that attracted millions of views on YouTube to testimonies from people who say their families have disappeared in China's Xinjiang region is moving its videos to little-known service Odysee after some were taken down by the Google-owned streaming giant, two sources told Reuters."

Long-time Slashdot reader sinij shares their report: Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights' channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China's Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years. On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube's guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its 'cyberbullying and harassment' policy. The channel's administrators had appealed the blocking of all twelve videos between April and June, with some reinstated — but YouTube did not provide an explanation as to why others were kept out of public view, the administrators told Reuters.

Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it on June 18, explaining that it had received multiple so-called 'strikes' for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content... YouTube asked Atajurt to blur the IDs. But Atajurt is hesitant to comply, the channel's administrator said, concerned that doing so would jeopardize the trustworthiness of the videos. Fearing further blocking by YouTube, they decided to back up content to Odysee, a website built on a blockchain protocol called LBRY, designed to give creators more control. About 975 videos have been moved so far.

Even as administrators were moving content, they received another series of automated messages from YouTube stating that the videos in question had been removed from public view, this time because of concerns that they may promote violent criminal organizations... Atajurt representatives fear pro-China groups who deny that human rights abuses exist in Xinjiang are using YouTube's reporting features to remove their content by reporting it en masse, triggering an automatic block. Representatives shared videos on WhatsApp and Telegram with Reuters which they said described how to report Atajurt's YouTube videos.
An activist working with the group told Reuters he's also faced offline challenges — including having his hard disks and cellphones confiscated multiple times in Kazakhstan.

This meant that the only place where they'd stored their entire video collection was YouTube.
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YouTube Criticized For Removing Videos Documenting China's Persecution of Uighur Muslims More

YouTube Criticized For Removing Videos Documenting China's Persecution of Uighur Muslims

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  • So what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Agent Fletcher ( 624427 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @12:43AM (#61548736)
    Google doesn't care if they get criticized, it's not like people are going to stop using YouTube and advertisers are going to pull out.

    • Nothing is forever (Re:So what?) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @01:57AM (#61548808)

      Every natural monopoly has a breaking point. YouTube was able to grab a near monopoly in the internet video market because people like the convenience of having one place to go to get things. If people can't get what they are looking for at YouTube then they will go somewhere else. Then people will get in the habit of going to this alternate site for whatever else it is that they are looking for, such as cute videos of kittens in boxes.

      There is a breaking point on this and YouTube has already been driving people to seek alternatives. Their treatment of videos discussing politics, COVID treatments, global warming, and I'm sure that there are other topics I'm missing, has driven people to go elsewhere. It's not hard to post a video on a website without YouTube, it's just that YouTube can make this process easier.

      I found the YouTube policy of taking down videos discussing COVID-19 treatments puzzling and frustrating. If there is a physician that wants to discuss the pros and cons, costs and benefits, of any medical treatment then that person should be free to do so. I don't want some IT geek or code monkey filtering out what medical advice I can or cannot get. I say this as an IT geek and code monkey. If YouTube thinks they need to put some disclaimer on the video that they cannot be held liable for the content then I'm fine with that, and I expect that. When listening to talk radio I'll hear the station give their own disclaimer on how the broadcasts of any hosts on a program and their guests does not mean the station endorses their views. This is especially problematic because YouTube wants to claim they deserve protections of a common carrier, or whatever the internet equivalent of a common carrier might be called. To have such protections means they are not curating content. That doesn't mean they must host everything that people submit, but it does mean that the rules they set out must be enforced consistently.

      YouTube is playing favorites. If that doesn't get them taken to court on them failing to hold up their end of the contract with content creators then it will drive content creators and content consumers to seek alternatives. Once that exodus starts then the natural monopoly forces that made YouTube popular may lead to their demise.

      • Every natural monopoly has a breaking point.

        This isnt even a natural monopoly. Its an artificial one, and its bot stable.

        There are other video platforms as large as youtube. These platforms, so far, are largely not competing with each other, but opening shots have been fired.

        Alphabet/Google/Youtube has tried to edge in on some of the market that netflix holds, but in the end they swung i around to compete with hulu instead. Other offerings resemble amazon video.

        "Community content" .. Meanwhile the non-competition between Twitch and Youtube is

        • It's a natural monopoly. YouTube used to have several competitors - Google Video, Yahoo Video, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. But for some reason people gravitated towards YouTube. Google eventually gave up and shuttered Google Video, and bought cash-poor YouTube before the music companies could sue it into oblivion and set court precedents which could've damaged the Internet for decades.

          Users' reluctance to change websites is even stronger than users' reluctance to change detergent or cola brands. So we've en

      • Sorry, but that's not going what happens.

        What happens is that people will go to the other place where those "controversial" videos can be shown, which will suffer for not taking them down due to not being allowed in the markets (like, say, China) that get pissed by them showing those videos, they will eventually flounder and people will not give a shit and go back to kittens playing on YouTube.

        • There's a lot of different places to discover videos now; not just video sites, but also various social media sites which auto-thumbnail the videos. The content from various video sites is presented with equal precedence on social media; they don't care where the content comes from, what they care about is whether people will click on it — and increase engagement. From their standpoint all third party content sources are valuable based on their merits, and supporting underdogs is likely considered pre

        • YouTube is blocked in China.

          So your theory that other sites will fail because they won't be in China while YouTube is, is wrong because YouTube isn't.

      • I have to point out that you're slightly wrong about Section 230 of the CDA. That's the law that gives YouTube (and everyone else) immunity from suit for third-party content. You said that they can't curate the content and still have the protection. This is false. What they can't do is have editorial control over the creation of the work. This is quite different than curation. Editorial control means that they direct the creators to make specific edits or include specific content. Since they're not doing th

        • That's all a bunch of bullshit. You're trying to 'splain something from what was 'splained to you, instead of just looking it the fuck up.

          Section 230 protects them from any lawsuits about what they choose not to show. It allows them to ban anything they think is unseemly or problematic, and there is no legal review of that decision available.

          It also protects ISPs, but that isn't relevant here.

          Stop being an idiot who repeats. Look shit up.

      • But there is no "internet video market", there's an advertising market. Google doesn't even have 50% of the advertising market. Yet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by znrt ( 2424692 )

        here is a breaking point on this and YouTube has already been driving people to seek alternatives.

        censorship motivated cases like this one are anecdotal. much more relevant are individual already popular "content creators" pulling out just to seeking a better financial deal and even that is anecdotal: a few might have had moderate success with their personal platforms but most have failed miserably (and silently) and are already back. none of that has changed youtube dominance one iota.

        what are these alternatives you speak of? everybody knows that no monopoly is eternal, that's an easy prediction, but d

      • Youtube has started to put pairs of advertisements at the start of videos, and at points along the viewing. Petty soon, the advertisement minutes will equal the topic's viewed minutes. I am already willing to view other content providers. Youtube, greed has no limits, and if a video is good or bad is based on how it hurts or does not hurt an advertiser. In USA, the biggest pot of advertising is from pharamacy and car manufactures. If a covid discussion hurts merk, physer, or other pharamacy companty, the
    • Exactly! People need to understand that they are the commodity not the customer. You tube does not exist to give people a voice but rather to provide a way for sellers of products to connect with people who might buy them. You tube confused that fact in their early days by letting anyone on for free, but behavior by creators that makes it hard them to make money, in any way, must be stopped - because it violates their business model. Unfortunately their behavior while starting up, and that of all the on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      I got a link to https://odysee.com/ [odysee.com] in the home bar. Keeping an eye out for them. The trend is away from youtube and people are actively working at it and trying to make other solutions work. Actively working hard to getting away from youtube, the hostility is really there now. A lot of creators really hate Google now, does not bode well for them in the future.

      The end will come pretty fast for youtube, just one alternate needs to take the lead and censor only according to law and everyone will flock there

  • "Don't be evil" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by technoviking1 ( 6415930 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @01:08AM (#61548758)
    Unless China asks you to cover up their human rights violations, of course.

    • Re:"Don't be evil" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 04, 2021 @01:14AM (#61548762)
      Recall Youtube is moderated by peons and pro-China organizations just look for ways to report videos, this isn't evidence of policy at Google rather that moderation is fallible much like Facebook's removal of the famous Vietnam photos.

      • I agree. If anything, the OP needs to use the Youtube editing tools to blur out the IDs, this won't alter the original videos. So if those IDs are needed for court evidence, it should still work.

        And definitely, the OP needs to publish his videos on multiple platforms. Relying on a single platform is a bad idea for a multitude of reasons. His gmail account could get hacked. Youtube could turn evil. You just never know what could happen.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'd like to add that in recent years political downmodding by pro-CCP (and pro-Putin) accounts has significantly increased here on Slashdot as well.

        Here the result isn't disappearance of posts but modding to oblivion and the poster critical of those regimes may end up losing mod points for an extended period. Even after that there is an insultory "probation period" with only a handful of mod points.

        If those pro-authoritarian modder accounts wish to create a "chilling effect" and Slashdot's algorithms play a

      • this isn't evidence of policy at Google

        It is: google's policy is $$ $$ $$ [fuck you lameness filter]

        Their net profit was $17 billion. They could employ moderators, but for them, allowing suppression of reporting on genocide is much more profitable.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Google removed "Don't be evil" from their Code of Conduct in 2018.
      Technically they did not remove it completely (to temper the backlash). But while it was a standalone phrase that stared the CoC preface and expanded upon and repeated, it is now sort of left as part of the last sentence of the CoC "... and remember ... don't be evil, and if you see something...". But it's pretty clear that they have been varying degrees of evil for long enough that they felt they HAD to officially admit it in writing.

      • But it's pretty clear that they have been varying degrees of evil for long enough that they felt they HAD to officially admit it in writing.

        evil canary did its job.

    • Re:"Don't be evil" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WierdUncle ( 6807634 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @08:16AM (#61549298)

      Unless China asks you to cover up their human rights violations, of course.

      The big problem here that when you do business in a country, you have to abide by the laws of that country. Does anybody really dispute that principle? I think we can give plenty of examples of laws in China that are distasteful, to say the least. For example, recent laws suppressing any kind of dissent or pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong.

      One obvious approach is to avoid doing business in a country whose laws you judge to be distasteful. I don't see that happening any time soon. Any business director who adopted that moral stance would rapidly be replaced by someone who paid attention to making profits. Businesses involved in mining in the Congo are basically funding a terrible warlord and slavery failed state. It is all very well saying that businesses should not do that, but it requires regulation to stop them. Moreover, it requires international regulation, which is difficult to construct.

      Anyway, I don't think there is anything especially evil about Youtube giving in to pressure from the CCP. It is just more visible, because of the size of Youtube and the nature of its service.

      • Anyway, I don't think there is anything especially evil about Youtube giving in to pressure from the CCP.

        It is evil, it just demonstrates the banality of evil.

      • Unless China asks you to cover up their human rights violations, of course.

        The big problem here that when you do business in a country, you have to abide by the laws of that country. Does anybody really dispute that principle?

        Youtube taking down videos regarding Uighur Muslims In China is that principle. It's incredibly sad, but it's at least understandable that Youtube is abiding by Chinese law.

        Youtube taking down videos regarding Uighur Muslims In America is not that principle. That's kowtowing to China.

        • Youtube taking down videos regarding Uighur Muslims In America is not that principle. That's kowtowing to China.

          Yes, I had missed that point. I have read a great deal about how the CCP tries to influence (i.e. threaten) expat Chinese in countries such as Australia, to keep everybody on message. If Youtube are doing this to people outside of China, then this is no longer proper international business practice, but being hired as thugs for profit.

    • Wait till "Alphabet" controls the organ-compatibilty databases - you can Google a new liver.

  • it's not even real communism they are fighting but the bar area communists will ensure that defenders of the Uighur don't besmirch their brand.

  • If only there was some sort of product or service that could go out and look for or maybe search for content. Maybe if there was more than one of those too and not a government supported monopoly, then people wouldn't be stuck on sites like youtube and they could find content served anywhere.

    • We had that. But unchecked markets tend towards monopolies/oligopolies. That's how we ended up with Google(/Youtube), Facebook, Amazon. Centralization inevitably happens and it requires constant effort to halt it.

      Of course, it isn't helped by succumbing to using words like "content" that marketing uses. Documenting persecution isn't "content". It's not created as something to consume and then forgotten about.
    • You fail to understand what decentralization is or at least underestimate its speed. Decentralized services can never ever match a centralized services speed. Can you imagine how much petabyte needs to be pumped around the decentralized youtube nodes in a decentralized mode?
  • From those who are complaining about this now, a lot of them were calling China "based" for treating the Muslims that way because these mainly right leaning people saw Muslims as a menace in places like the UK constantly talking about supposedly never ending knife attacks. Now that China has been an agitator during the Trump administration and then the COVID situation, these people are now changing their tune.
    • This is about perseuting Uyghurs, not about religion. Mixed reception of Muslims in Europe has nothing to do with the persecution of an ethnic minority in China. I don't like the attempt to portray it all as a religious conflict.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sorry but you're fucking wrong. It's all about the religion. It has nothing to do with "Uyghurs" being Mongolic-Turkic. You don't like to portray it as a religious conflict, because all people like you can think about it's racial differences.

        It's pretty well know that even in MODERATE Muslim nations, that surveys have shown that a good portion of their citizens believe that employing terrorist methods is justified. The West has spent trillions of dollars trying to eradicate these elements from the cultu

      • There is a religious aspect to it.

        While the persecution is ethnic, the resistance at present is mostly organizing itself around religion and around organizations banned in USA, Europe and the rest of the world - ISIS, Al Qaeda and affiliates. Do not shoot the messenger.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )

          There is a religious aspect to it.

          No, but you are wrong. There are other Muslim minorities in China that don't get treated nearly as badly (yet). Also, the crackdowns in Xinjiang are against all religions. Churches were destroyed in addition to Mosques. This is an effort at Sinonization [wikipedia.org]. Trying to confuse this with Muslims in other parts of the world is a CCP talking point and nothing more.

          • There is a religious aspect to it.

            No, but you are wrong. There are other Muslim minorities in China that don't get treated nearly as badly (yet). Also, the crackdowns in Xinjiang are against all religions. Churches were destroyed in addition to Mosques. This is an effort at Sinonization [wikipedia.org]. Trying to confuse this with Muslims in other parts of the world is a CCP talking point and nothing more.

            Reading comprehension difficulties? I said: PERSECUTION IS ETNIC. RESISTANCE IS RELIGIOUS.

          • Don't worry, China will work their way down to them eventually. Like most with scope, they have a history of stamping and/or breeding out groups on both ideological and racial bases.

      • Muslims are treated poorly in China, just as Christians are.

        • Muslims are treated poorly in China, just as Christians are.

          China treats everybody who stands up against the government poorly. Muslim, Christian, any or no religion. It doesn't matter.
          Why would you expect them to do otherwise?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This is about a religious minority who don't want to join the developed part of China.
        They'd rather have no jobs and keep their kids working on the farm rather than send them to schools.

  • that's capitalism (Score:3)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @01:40AM (#61548788) Homepage Journal

    Capitalism is about folding like a cheap lawn chair ... made in China.

    • Capitalism is the derogatory term thought up by socialists to describe a free market. A free market requires informed consumers, and to have informed consumers requires that people be free to speak.

      Freedom to speak does not mean a freedom to deceive, because if lies are tolerated then there is no way for a consumer to be informed. A consumer that cannot trust anything they are told then they are no more informed than if they were told nothing. China allows some elements of a free market, and so much of t

      • Capitalism is the derogatory term thought up by socialists to describe a free market.

        No, this is a confusion free market advocates make. Capitalism is, as the name itself says, concerned with who controls the means of production ("capital" is a synonym for "means of production"), that it should be an ever shrinking minority, this minority ever more powerful, and kept operating that way. There are several free market systems that aren't capitalistic, as there are capitalists and pro-capitalism advocates who absolutely despise free markets. For example, the most intensely pro-free market, pro

      • An important job of the US federal government is to protect the consumers from lies, and that includes lies by omission.

        If that were true. America would have consumer protection laws comparable to all the other Western countries.

      • This is not accurate at all. We had the free market in the US for the bulk of its formative years up through the 1800s. It led to things like robber barons, organized crime, snake oil salesmen and thousands of other awful things. The free market absolutely never, ever works except for those who are able to use violence and market domination. It always crushes the little guy. No exceptions. The concept of the "informed consumer" is a woebegotten myth. In a free market there is no organization to ensure that

  • Take all the media sources parroting the USA's oh-so-selective concern for human rights on China, and cross out all those who lied to you about:

    Iraq
    Iran
    Libya
    Syria
    Venezuela
    Ukraine (overthrown by the US, not Russia)

    And what do you have left.

    • none of the mainstream ones

      But I wouldnt call it "parroting" because I formly believe youve got the cause ad effect backwards. The media yanks around governments, not the other way around.

    • Ukraine (overthrown by the US, not Russia)

      What are you talking about? Ukraine is still independent.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        What do you mean, what do you mean? All of the countries ever overthrown by the US "remain independent". Iraq and Iran were "independently" ruled by Saddam and the Shah after they were installed by CIA coups. Same for all the latin american governments overthrown by the US.

        • The CIA wasn't able to install anything. They are too incompetent for that. The Shah was a British thing mainly.

          That was a long time ago. Since then, the CIA has decreased in competency, and they can't even pick targets correctly.

  • Just like Nike, ‘Of China and For China&rsqu (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @02:08AM (#61548812)

    Nike CEO admits company exists to serve Communist China. All for a buck.

    If there is a Hell, the enablers of the CCP genocide [nytimes.com] will be on its express elevator.

  • Solution: Human Rights and Missing Person (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @02:55AM (#61548858)
    YouTube Solution: Human Rights and Missing Persons have an exception where no malice or harm is intended and would meet 'Norway' standards - where Norway is 1st in the world for press freedom rankings. Are we seriously saying if there was a disaster in the USA, like another Katrina, that Youtube would ban videos from shelters seeking to reunite family and children? Oh they are Chinese or ethnic, so ... Sorry humanitarian requirements come first. Minneapolis videos of police doing the wrong thing would also fit into the 'too hard' basket, should the police union complain.. The examples fit into 'Lobbyists seeking to contain the truth' . There is no reason why Youtube should not aspire to upgrade to Norway standards here.

  • YouTube is obsolete (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Trumpian ( 6529466 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @03:09AM (#61548870)
    I stopped with youtube once it started to show 2 commercials every 5 min. Even worse than commercial TV. Looking for some good alternatives. If anybody has some please let me know..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      What, YouTube has ads? I didn't know that (looks over at ad blocker icon in the corner :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      YouTube premium.

      Or if you don't like to pay, there are dozens of ad-blocking solutions. And if it is not enough for you, there are plenty of other options, but if you want free, ad-free, convenient, legal and with a lot of good content you are asking too much.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by twakar ( 128390 )

      How is it that you're seeing ads on youtube? The only way I can think of is that you must be using the youtube app on phone/tablet. Any browser can easily block out all the ads. I literally haven't seen a youtube ad in over 5 years. Using Ublock Origin, Ghostery, Privacy Badger and Malwarebytes on Firefox. Presto!! All ads are gone. Just for good measure I have a pi-hole to block anything that might slip through.

      Try it, you'll like it.

    • YouTube is obsolete

      Looking for some good alternatives. If anybody has some please let me know..

      How can it be obsolete if there isn't an obvious alternative?

  • which they could not refuse.

  • If you do not own a thing, it is not yours. Not Youtube, Fecesbook or anything else. This is difficult for some people to understand.

    Censorship is passionately desired by right and left. If you don't want to be censored, host your own content where enemies cannot take it down. China views pro-Uigher content the way Democrats view Donald Trump on Twitter and quite logically tries to deplatform it by any effective means.

    Right and wrong have nothing to do with the desire to censor political opponents. Politics

    • If you do not own a thing, it is not yours.

      That's why without communism, it's not your country. You're its human.

      Of course, building a communist system of any scale has turned out to be impossible, because you gotta sleep sometime

  • YouTube wants a share of the Chinese cake, and they know that it gets hard to get any if they don't play to the tune of the CCP. Since there is more people in China wanting to see kittens hunt yarn than there are people who give a shit about the Ugi.. Uig...

  • People mistakenly think that YouTube is a left platform. YouTube is a business that will be whatever makes money and allowing Chinese criticism is bad for money

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @09:49AM (#61549494)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Wait, Now They're Censoring Stuff We Want To See! (Score:4, Informative)

    by rapierian ( 608068 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @09:56AM (#61549516)
    Google/Youtube is now censoring stuff we want the world to see, not all the stuff we want censored! This wasn't supposed to happen! Who could have seen this coming?

  • Consider the following two items:

    1. China really IS persecuting the Uighers. This is a fact, no matter one's opinion of whether it is justified, or Uihgers are bad, etc. Factually the're doing it. Google and YouTube do not want you to know this so they suppress it.

    2. Trump, no matter what you think of him, held a rally within the past 48 hours. This is also a fact, no matter if you think him the devil and every word he uttered a lie, or if you think him a hero and every word uttered a morsel of golden wisdo

  • Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves --Abraham Lincoln (b. 1809)

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