YouTube says it’s was an accident that they’ve been censoring comments on every video, including ones in America, that’s been critical of the Communist Party of China:
YouTube confirms it’s accidentally been deleting comments containing two phrases that insult China’s Communist Party https://t.co/hPdu6O4L96 pic.twitter.com/TwqkFK7ymH
— The Verge (@verge) May 26, 2020
WTF?
Oopsie. We did a propaganda. https://t.co/QmxcxWG6EP
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) May 26, 2020
The first mention of the issue we saw was from tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey:
YouTube has deleted every comment I ever made about the Wumao (五毛), an internet propaganda division of the Chinese Communist Party. Who at Google decided to censor American comments on American videos hosted in America by an American platform that is already banned in China?
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 26, 2020
This appears to be a new global policy on YouTube, not directed at me specifically. Try saying anything negative about the 五毛, or even mentioning them at all. Your comment will last about 30 seconds and get deleted without warning or notice, CCP-censor style. To what end?
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 26, 2020
Recommended
It will be interesting to see if this gets any mainstream media coverage over the coming days and weeks. Nothing so far.
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 26, 2020
This caught the attention of the president’s son, Donald Jr.:
Where is the mainstream media coverage of this?@YouTube censoring one of America’s great tech entrepreneurs, @PalmerLuckey, seems like a big deal… doesn’t it?
Especially since they seem to be taking the side of a Chineese Communist Party propaganda machine. WTF? #Censorship https://t.co/CEINArQJE4
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 26, 2020
We’re going to need a little bit more of an explanation than it was an accident:
Holy crap.
I just tested this. Posted a comment that said "Curious what will happen if I say 五毛 are terrible."
It was gone after 20 seconds. https://t.co/bvGXfCRTkk
— Lyman Expand the House Stone, AKA 石來民 (@lymanstoneky) May 26, 2020
I just tested this too. Comment deleted in 20 seconds. @google & @youtube are helping Chinese regime censors https://t.co/NidnAtaLzT
— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) May 26, 2020
@AlexMartin The same happened to me when I tried this a moment ago. The UK amongst all the other countries is having to put up with pro-Chinese censoring. https://t.co/kdpQTJ8i40
— Patrick Seurre #FBPE (@patrickseurre) May 26, 2020
Can confirm – tried "Wumao/五毛 internet censorship China CCP sucks". The latter part doesn't seem to trigger the mechanism by the way.
Oh and "Xi Jinping pooh" still works, so that's good 😉 https://t.co/hDg0O6wX7K
— tomires (@tomires) May 26, 2020
Mind you, YouTube has no idea what’s really going on. From The Verge:
The company confirmed to The Verge this was happening in error and that it was looking into the issue.
We’ll keep you posted.
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