The saga with the largest video sharing platform YouTube and cryptocurrency content producers continues. This time, another large account has complained that his videos have been flagged as “harmful or dangerous content” without any real reason behind it. The issue at hand might be that YouTube can’t tell the difference between relevant and educational content and information aiming to scam.
Ivan on Tech is one of the biggest blockchain-related YouTube channels, currently boasting upwards of 215,000 subscribers.
According to the owner, YouTube continues to inappropriately flag cryptocurrency- and blockchain-related content as “harmful or dangerous” without any reasons for it.
YOUTUBE CRYPTO PURGE IS BACK!!
Our channel has a strike as soon as I started a new live stream.
This doesn’t make sense, nothing dangerous or harmful was being presented in that stream. @TeamYouTube @ytcreators @YouTube Please help!
WE NEED HELP ON THIS MATTER!
SHARE THIS!!!! pic.twitter.com/630Mp3al8d— Ivan on Tech (@IvanOnTech) February 23, 2020
As seen in the tweet, a video stream that Ivan on Tech posted, talking about the recent price movements of Bitcoin as well as essential updates surrounding Bitcoin’s halving, has been flagged. The owner argues that nothing dangerous or harmful was presented in this particular stream. The strike was issued on February 23rd and lasts for 3 months until May. The owner has already submitted an appeal.
Interestingly enough, the official Twitter account for YouTube, responded in the thread, saying:
Thanks for reaching out, we’ll look into this and follow up once we have more to share.
No further information is available at the time of this writing.
A lot of different cryptocurrency content creators on YouTube saw their videos flagged or downright removed from the platform. In January, as Cryptopotato reported, YouTube said that the reason for this was an “error on our side during the review process.”
Now, more than a month later, the same issue seems to be at hand. As Crypto Zombie pointed out, the platform still doesn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between legitimate live streams and scams.
What is more, the most recent events somewhat prove the comments of The Moon Carl to be correct. In January, he said it’s entirely possible for something like this to happen again, and it did.
This brings up the issues that centralized platforms can cause when it comes to censoring content.
In response to this article, Ivan himself had told CryptoPotato on the matter that “It’s a complete random strike that came a minute after I started the (live) stream, I just welcomed the viewers… YouTube needs to look into this”