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DEYouTube has taken down more than 70,000 videos and 9,000 channels for disseminating fake information about the war in Ukraine, The Guardian reports.
The videos were removed for violating content guidelines. Some videos described the war as a “liberation mission.”
“We have a major violent events policy and that applies to things like denial of major violent events: everything from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook. And, of course, what’s happening in Ukraine is a major violent event. And so we’ve used that policy to take unprecedented action,” YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, said.
According to him, YouTube’s news content on the war had received more than 40 million views in Ukraine alone.
“The first and probably most paramount responsibility is making sure that people who are looking for information about this event can get accurate, high-quality, credible information on YouTube. The consumption of authoritative channels on our platform has grown significantly, of course in Ukraine, but also in countries surrounding Ukraine, Poland, and also within Russia itself,” Mohan noted.
Much of the removed channels and content represented Kremlin narratives about the invasion, he added.
As the media outlet informs, YouTube is very popular in Russia, having an estimated 90 million users. Unlike other American platforms, YouTube was not blocked, although it has the content of opposition politicians.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, YouTube placed a worldwide ban on channels associated with Russian state media, including Russia Today and Sputnik. Channels of some Kremlin propagandists have also been blocked. Earlier, YouTube blocked all monetisation features for Russian users.
Bohdan Marusyak
