YouTube Will Censor Hacked Material Occurred on 13 Aug 2020

YouTube announced in a blog post how the platform would be “supporting elections” moving forward. The post listed the different types of content that would be removed, including that which contains “hacked information”:

Removing content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses. For example, videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate shared with the intent to interfere in an election.

In covering this, Reclaim The Net gave a great example that shows the obvious absurdity of a policy like this:

Here’s an example of how this could work: say a candidate had committed murder – but this fact only surfaced thanks to a “hacking” effort, Google/YouTube would block that information, and leave its users/voters in the dark. So – who would be interfering with the democratic process now?

Not coincidentally, just one day prior, the New York Times reported on several BigTech platforms meeting with government agencies in order to “secure” the November election. They immediately started sanitizing the article.

Monopolistic tech companies which collaborate in unison with government agencies to prevent unauthorized narratives from circulating on the internet are conducting state censorship. Own it.

– Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) 12 Aug 2020