Posted on 09/29/2021 8:52:36 AM PDT by Red Badger
Officials in Moscow have issued a sternly-worded ultimatum to YouTube’s parent company, Google, saying the video streaming site could face restrictions after it took down two channels run by RT’s German-language service. In the statement, released on Wednesday morning, the country’s national media regulator, Roskomnadzor, said that it “demands all restrictions be lifted from the YouTube channels RT DE and Der Fehlende Part (DFP), run by the news outlet RT, as soon as possible.”
According to the authorities, failure to do so would be a violation of Russian law and, “for such actions, an internet resource can be designated as breaching fundamental human rights and freedoms,” and can face a formal warning.
“In the event that the owner of the platform doesn’t comply with the warning, legislation allows us to take measures including completely or partially blocking access to it,” Roskomnadzor added.
On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry had hit out at the decision to remove the two channels as “an act of unprecedented information aggression” and an “obvious manifestation of censorship and suppression of freedom of expression.” According to the diplomats, YouTube acted with the “obvious connivance, if not at the insistence,” of German authorities.
Both RT DE and DFP were removed earlier that day, reportedly with no prospect of appeal. YouTube claims that they broke the service’s rules by attempting to circumvent a ‘community guidelines’ strike, handed down for ‘medical misinformation’ in four videos. The details of the purported breach are not yet clear, but RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, has said that it amounts to “a declaration of media war against Russia by Germany.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry has also warned that it could take steps against German news outlets in retaliation over the decision. “Adopting reciprocal measures against the German media in Russia which, by the way, has been repeatedly shown to have interfered in our country’s internal affairs, seems not only appropriate but necessary,” it said in a statement.
The ministry went on to say that imposing such restrictions is “the only possible way to focus our partners’ attention on a constructive and meaningful dialogue around this unacceptable situation.”
The Russian government has been engaged in a standoff with YouTube in recent weeks over material published by allies of jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny in the run-up to the country’s parliamentary elections. Ahead of the vote earlier this month, the video streaming site eventually complied with demands to remove the material, which officials said breached national laws.
Even the former soviets are fed up with Google censorship.
YouTube is evil. It is indeed ironic that we now live in a censored society for which we ridiculed the Soviets.
Good
Google - the literal incarnation of the Ministry of Truth.
You Tube, Twitter and Facebook are all setting things up for the next election. They are now and will be an extension of the Globalist/ Obama/ Biden agenda as the weeks and months pass. ..as we’ve seen already.
I’m in favor of using any means to destroy the grave censorship threat this nation is facing. Corporations which can exercise government like powers need to be wiped out.
+1.
How the worm has turned.
More like the heir apparent to TASS.
Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
JUST IN: YouTube said it will ban videos “that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines”
ORE: YouTube will terminate the channels of what it calls prominent vaccine misinformation spreaders, including the channel of the Robert F Kennedy Jr.-affiliated Children’s Health Defense Fund and channels belonging to Joseph Mercola, Erin Elizabeth and Sherri Tenpenny. (Axios)
GREAT!
That's not a private company. That's a State in its own right. Google can swing elections through its search engine. It can influence policy through its YouTube algorithms.
A corner grocery store is a private company. Google is a State, and a very powerful one.
As a sometime libertarian, I support the Russian State in its conflict with the Google State. Google is currently oppressing me more than is Russia.
"Wow! .. Russia TOTALLY banned You Tube!
RT television is now my favorite channel.
Darn Russkies tell more what is happening in the US than our own media.
The old Soviet censors are rolling in their graves wondering why they weren’t as audacious in their censorship as the Dark Tech Overlords.
Indeed one of many
If Google doesn’t like it they can just build themselves a new Russia.
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