The West launched an offensive against Russia on the information front. American video hosting YouTube has removed two German-language channels owned by Russia Today, RT DE and Der Fehlende Part. One of the most popular news channels among the German-speaking audience was issued a one-way ticket: they were removed without the right to restore.
“The YouTube channel RT DE is the fourth most influential German-language media outlet, surpassing Deutsche Welle and other German giants. In June 2021 alone, the channel had 21 million views, ”wrote Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, on her telegram channel. “This is a real media war declared by the state of Germany against the state of Russia.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry took the side of Russia Today. The department said that the channel was subjected to “unprecedented information aggression” from the video platform, “committed with obvious connivance, if not at the insistence of the German side.”
The response from Moscow was not long in coming. This morning Roskomnadzor threatened YouTube with blocking it in Russia. Representatives of witchcraft turned to Google, which owns a popular video hosting service, with a demand to immediately unblock the stumbling blocks.
The German authorities, in turn, disowned the blocking by moving the arrows to the American video platform.
– This measure is YouTube's decision. This blocking has nothing to do with the actions of the federal government, – emphasized the official representative of the German Cabinet of Ministers Steffen Seibert.
The press service of Google called the reasons for blocking RT channels, in which few believed. The formal reason for the removal was nothing more, nothing less, but the coronavirus.
“YouTube has clear community guidelines outlining what is allowed on the platform,” the post said. “RT DE has issued a warning for uploading content that violates our COVID-19 False Medical Information Policy.”
If Google and YouTube refuse to meet the Russian regulator halfway, then Russia may be left without a popular international video hosting service. More than 80 million Russians visit it every month.
Note that Moscow is not the only one who has complaints about the most popular portal.
For a long time, access to it was limited in China. The same ban extended to Facebook, Twitter, Google and other popular sites and social networks. Instead, the people of the PRC were offered their own counterparts, which more than replaced the Chinese with international Internet resources. Last year, the Tuber mobile browser was released, through which you can access censored versions of major platforms, including YouTube.
The Iranian authorities also put a cross on YouTube. He was accompanied by both American social networks and search engines, as well as the Russian VKontakte, the Telegram messenger and the Yandex search browser.
YouTube is periodically restricted in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Venezuela and other countries. For example, in 2012, a number of Indian states decided to restrict access to the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims,” published on YouTube.
