The most spectacular deplatforming cascade in the history of social media cyberpurges continues with YouTube:
YouTube has announced that it pulled new content from US President Donald Trump’s verified channel and blocked it from uploading new videos for at least a week, citing violations of its policy against inciting violence.
In a statement late on Tuesday, YouTube said that the Trump channel was issued a strike over unspecified “new content,” and pursuant to its long-standing policy, “is now prevented from uploading new videos or live streams for a minimum of seven days.”
The video-sharing platform, which was the only major social medium still carrying Trump’s message after the president was purged from both Twitter and Facebook, did not rule out the possibility of the week-long ban being extended further.
Comments under all videos on Trump’s channel have been suspended “indefinitely,” YouTube said, noting that this was a standard practice for the cases “involving safety concerns.”
The ban did not quite come out of the blue. Earlier on Tuesday, an umbrella group of civil rights organizations vowed to pressure YouTube advertisers to drop the platform if it fails to follow Twitter and Facebook’s suit in blocking Trump’s accounts.
That’s a bold move, Cotton. We’ll see how it turns out for them.