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A day after YouTube abruptly deleted millions of videos related to cryptocurrency citing it as “harmful or dangerous content” and “sale of regulated goods”, the videos have been restored.While the Google-owned company has not officially made any statements in this regard, a leading crypto-focused portal Cointelegraph has mentioned in a report that YouTube has responded that the content was taken down by accident and since been restored.
The move by YouTube has enraged crypto communities across the world and is seeking an official explanation from the video-sharing platform.Several influencers sought for a boycott of YouTube
Several crypto influencers use YouTube to create simple videos and content to help people across the world understand cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and everything related.The sudden restriction on crypto content by the world’s largest video platform has been termed as a “well-planned strike” against the community that favors crypto and decentralization of financial systems.
Lately, Google has been taking stringent actions against content that are abusive and explicit or are breaking its advertiser guidelines.However, it is not clear if YouTube has penalized crypto videos under the above-mentioned category.
Expressing concern about the video restrictions in India, which is not a crypto-friendly nation, Nishcal Shetty, founder of the P2P crypto trading platform WazirX tweeted that, “ Wow! YouTube censoring crypto-related news content.It looks like a direct attack on free speech.”
Shetty, whose company WazirX got acquired by global crypto exchange Binance , further added, “ How do you tackle such threats from monopolistic platforms? You work hard on creating content using which @YouTube and others grow.Once they are big enough, they put you under the bus if you don’t do what they like.
One of the major reasons why I am a believer od decentralization.”
Not only YouTube, but various other social media platforms have also charted out some internal policies against crypto-related content.
Apparently, the micro-blogging site does not allow users to pay and promote a tweet that has crypto content in it.
Sharing a screenshot of his conversation with Twitter, Shetty responded saying that the crypto ads or tweets violate the company’s Restricted Financial Products and Services Policy.The response from Twitter comes in at a time when its founder and CEO Jack Dorsey wants to move the platform onto the blockchain.The social media giant is putting together a team to develop an open, decentralized standard for social media.
More interestingly, social media giant Facebook, which is gearing up to launch its own cryptocurrency Libra by end of 2020, was the first to ban crypto-related ads in January last year over concerns that users might be scammed by initial coin offerings offered by some crypto start-ups.
However, it reversed the ban in June this year to allow more businesses working on those technologies to promote their efforts on the social network.
“We’ve listened to feedback and assessed the policy’s effectiveness.While we will still require people to apply to run ads promoting cryptocurrency, starting today, we will narrow this policy to no longer require pre-approval for ads related to blockchain technology, industry news, education or events related to cryptocurrency,” Facebook said in a blog post .
By Priyanka Pani Priyanka is a Senior Regional Correspondent (Middle East and Asia) at IBS Intelligence.Related Posts.
