Documenting the 2018 YouTube Purge | The War on Free Speech Continues

jasonliberty (68)in #news • 6 years ago (edited)

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The Purge

My name is Jason, and on the evening of February 27th, my YouTube channel (Jason Liberty) was terminated, only 12 days after I began posting videos about the Parkland, Florida school shooting, where I was mostly covering witness interviews whose testimonies challenged the 'official narrative'. The 2018 YouTube Purge has begun, widespread media censorship is now occurring on a scale not seen before, and this is story which is still unfolding. (I will be sharing the details and story of my channel's censorship and termination in another post & video - stay tuned. The purpose of this article is to try and show people the bigger picture of what is going on here in this recent purge.)

For those who are unaware, the alternative media reaction to the Valentine's Day Parkland school shooting event sparked a massive campaign led by CNN to silence dissent and censor all evidence which challenges the official story of the Florida shooting. Independent journalists and researchers including myself immediately began reporting on various witness interviews the mainstream media was ignoring, and began raising important questions which neither the corporate media stooges nor government officials were willing to ask, or answer for that matter. After all, we live in a world where unapproved questions are mostly ignored and typically go unanswered.

This has been the reality for quite some time, but the powers that shouldn't be have just stepped their game up a notch. Any and all information which challenges the corporate media's biased reporting, their political agendas, their credibility, and their precious web of deception in this empire of lies – it must all be censored, because they are no longer capable of effectively 'discrediting' the truth in the eyes of the masses any longer.

This most recent 'new & improved' campaign to end free speech in America all began when, just a few days after the Florida shooting, CNN noticed that a top trending video on YouTube was a so-called conspiracy video, which in their eyes was unacceptable. The video, entitled DAVID HOGG THE ACTOR, fueled questions regarding whether student and shooting-survivor-turned-outspoken-anti-gun-activist David Hogg was actually an actor being used to push CNN's gun-control agenda. In response, CNN posted an article on Wednesday morning (Feb. 21st), decrying what they called “outlandish claims,” “conspiracy theories”and “lies”. YouTube promptly removed the video a few hours later on the same day, issuing a 'strike' to the channel owner and making a statement that declared it was the title of the video (as opposed to the actual content) which violated their community guidelines.

“It was the No. 1 trending video Wednesday morning until it was taken down following a CNN inquiry,” CNN reported. The next day, CNN released an article entitled “Tech's biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again.” CNN accused Google/YouTube of having “spread conspiracy theories” in the aftermath of both the Las Vegas and Florida shootings, even though it is not the YouTube staff, but the users who are actually responsible for spreading these types of videos by creating, liking and sharing them. Clearly, it is the free exchange of information and ideas which CNN feels so threatened by. Thus began the 2018 YouTube purge, with CNN leading the campaign to defame and discredit all independent media sources who dare disagree with their scripted version of 'the news' or their biased political agendas.

For those who are unfamiliar with YouTube or are unaware, the video hosting platform operates on a 3-strike model, where the first strike issued against an account acts as a warning, and the second strike issued in a 3-month period gets the user a two week ban from uploading new videos. A third strike in three months gets a channel immediately terminated. Strikes are issued for either 'copyright violations' or 'guideline violations', and a channel must get three of the same category of strike to have their account terminated. Users can appeal strikes, at which time YouTube claims their staff reviews the video before deciding whether to withdraw the strike and reinstate the video or to maintain their original decision. However, in most cases appealing video strikes is pointless, as this rarely gets a channel their video back online, and this has been the case since well before 2018.

Another thing many people may be unaware of is that YouTube does in fact have a long history of censorship, well known for demonetizing any 'politically incorrect' content and removing videos of so-called conspiracy theories, but what has happened in the weeks following the Parkland event is a massive wave of censorship on a scale far beyond anything YouTube content creators have ever seen or experienced in the past. Not only were videos espousing the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland shooting being struck and removed, but some videos dating back to the Vegas shooting, and even as far back as Sandy Hook and the 2013 Syria strikes were taken down. And at least in the past, it was very unusual for older videos such as these that have been up on YouTube for months or years without any issues to be struck and removed, but we have now entered into a new age of censorship...

It is well known that computer algorithms are responsible for a large portion of video strikes and removals, and YouTube is now known to update their algorithms after large-scale, high media coverage events in order to censor the accompanying 'conspiracy theories' - as they did in the days following the Las Vegas Shooting. However, the tech giant also has an army of human censors in place who help police the social media platform, as there are 113 government and non-government agencies which are members of YouTube's “Trusted Flagger” program. How it works is that organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and other program members help police YouTube for content deemed to violate the community guidelines, from so-called hate speech and bullying to violent content and terrorist recruitment videos.

What is so disconcerting about this arrangement is that both the SPLC & ADL are left wing extremist organizations themselves, which have been supporting the war on freedom in America since their inceptions. The SPLC has been directly tied to violence in the past, and has labeled militia members as “domestic terrorists” and conservative organizations as “hate groups”. The ADL is one of the very few of these partner organizations which has publicly announced their membership in this program, openly praising censorship by Social Media platforms. All of the member organizations are protected by strict confidentiality agreements, and most of them choose to hide behind their anonymity, leaving the world to wonder who else is deeply involved in YouTube flagging practices and censorship policies.

What is even more frightening is the shocking amount of control and influence this program gives to these mostly anonymous outside organizations. The Daily Caller, having received inside information from Google employees, reports:

“First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the partner groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers designing the algorithms policing the video platform but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.”

So, the mostly anonymous organizations who participate in YouTube's “Trusted Flaggers” program are not only given technology which enables them to mass flag content, they actually heavily influence and help design the algorithms which are responsible for so much of the censorship which occurs! That's a lot of power hiding behind anonymity, and keep in mind that some of these partners are reportedly government organizations...

Google has also recently added 10,000 human flaggers to its army of thought police in early 2018, whose full time job it is to flag content for removal. The purge which immediately followed shows that YouTube wasn't joking around when they made the announcement in 2017 that they would be hiring the additional employees, and planned to further 'crack down' on 'extremist' content...

The computer algorithms were surely responsible for a large number of video strikes which appeared to be censored based upon certain key words, while Google's giant army of clearly biased flaggers surely had a lot to do with targeting conservatives, political dissent, and what appeared to be certain specific channels. Any video which contained mention of 'false flag,' 'code red drill,' 'hoax,' 'crisis actor,' 'David Hogg,' and even 'guns' was subject to removal. Just uploading news footage of David Hogg or simply mentioning the student's name was enough to receive a strike for “harassing & bullying.” Any video which contained witness testimony of multiple shooters at the Parkland school, or any eyewitness testimony which cast doubt on the official story was subject to removal - or other means of censorship.

(All links in the above paragraph are to videos of mine that were censored by YouTube - the specifics are in the description boxes of each video).

As Breitbart reported, videos criticizing CNN's biased coverage of the Florida shooting, and footage of violent ANTIFA protesters were also taken down.

Independent journalist Mike Cernovich reported earlier today that a video he uploaded of left-wing Antifa activists chanting death threats had been taken down by YouTube. The video shows Antifa shouting violent threats at attendees of Cernovich’s Night for Freedom event in Washington DC, which took place on Saturday. Cernovich commented to Breitbart News on YouTube’s removal, saying, “YouTube is censoring honest, unedited reporting about ANTIFA’s actions. This can mean only one thing — they endorse far left wing violence.”

Now, even posting video footage of NATO-backed bombings in Syria or Yemen can get a channel a strike, for supposedly violating YouTube guidelines on posting 'violent & graphic content'. Apparently only graphic content which casts the West in a bad light is considered to violate these guidelines, as YouTube seems to have absolutely no problem with CNN & the rest of the MSM posting violent and graphic war-related video footage - So long as the violence is allegedly perpetrated by ISIS, Assad or Russian-backed forces, and can be used to further the Zionist agenda for the U.S. Empire/military industrial complex/war machine in the Middle East. This is just one example of the inconsistencies with which YouTube enforces their community guidelines, where 'approved' corporate media channels seem to never be on the receiving end of these strikes, no matter how offensive or graphic their content is.

Interestingly, the YouTube community guidelines are intentionally vague, and the notices channels are given when their videos receive strikes are very generic, not specifying what particular content in the video is supposedly in violation of the guidelines. Recently, the most common specific guidelines which videos seem to be getting strikes for is 'harassment & bullying', 'hate speech', and 'violent or graphic content'. However, in many cases the notice doesn't even specify which particular guideline the video is claimed to have violated, and there are quite a few. So, it is essentially impossible for the affected channel owners to actually know what specific guideline they have allegedly 'violated', or what specific content they posted which was allegedly in violation of these guidelines. In other words, nobody actually knows what is and is not allowed on YouTube anymore, and the inconsistency with which YouTube enforces their guidelines only adds to the confusion.

What we do know is that the majority of content being removed challenges the political agenda and scripted version of the news being put out by CNN and the corporate media cabal. It's certainly not just 'alt-right' 'conspiracy theorists' being targeted on YouTube as CNN would have us believe, but anyone speaking out against the political establishment or questioning the official media narrative. And not only have hundreds of videos been removed with bogus or questionable guideline violation strikes in the past month, many channels have also been terminated and banned from YouTube entirely. A number of these channels which have been shut down had very large followings with millions of views and hundreds of videos – clearly content creators who are putting out credible information and popular content, at least in the eyes of their millions of viewers.

Terminated Channels

One of the most notable channel terminations was the Health Ranger, run by Mike Adams of Natural News, which had well over 200,000 channel subscribers, millions of views a month, and over 17,000 videos which were removed with the channel on March 3rd. Far from being your typical 'conspiracy theorist', Mike Adams is an honest independent conservative researcher and voice of reason with a very large audience, who frequently exposes the food and pharmaceutical industry's lies and corruption. Similarly, the Richie Allen Show channel which had over 76,000 subscribers & 1400 videos, was terminated over a week earlier on February 22nd, one of the first channels to disappear.

In the early stages of this wave of censorship, the first channel termination I noticed was Urban Moving, who had been heavily covering the Florida school shooting event, putting out a lot of good information, and has since relocated to Vimeo. Isaac Green's Anti-School channel was terminated sometime between the 21st and the 24th. Jordan Sather of Destroying the Illusion interviewed Isaac Green of Anti-School regarding his channel shutdown, and in response Jordan's own channel was terminated on the 26th with a strike to the video of that interview.

Anti-School had about 70,000 subscribers & 3 million views a month, while Destroying the Illusion had about 120,000 subscribers & 2 million views a month. Isaac, back on YouTube with a channel under his real name and another under a pseudonym, is now also suing Google/YouTube, while Jordan is on a new YouTube channel, Destroying the Illusion 2.0. Besides asking questions about the Florida shooting, both of these individuals had also been putting out a lot of content covering the QAnon disclosures – one of several potentially 'targeted' topics that may have drawn the attention of censors.

Also terminated between February 21st and 24th was Ron Johnson's Stranger Than Fiction News channel (150,000 subscribers), David Seaman (170,000 subscribers), Charles Walton (50,000 subscribers), Bombard's Body Language, Dustin Nemos, and the Doctor of Common Sense. Ron Johnson describes Stranger Than Fiction News as a “pro-Christian, pro-American channel.” Charles Walton, a prolific Las Vegas Shooting researcher, had been on his channel since 2006, accumulating over 47 million channel views and more than 4700 videos which were deleted from YouTube.

Mandy of Bombard's Body Language is in no way a conspiracy theorist, using her channel to cover prominent figures from major political and news events, reading their body language and then giving her conclusions. She, like so many others, got one of her channel strikes simply for doing a video on David Hogg, where she absolutely DID NOT state or even infer that he was a crisis actor. Mandy had a large channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and has since gotten her channel back, but not without a majority of her videos being demonetized – in the past, she had been making a living doing this...

Classic liberal Carl Benjamin, who was also banned from Twitter last year, was locked out of his Google Account and YouTube Channel, Sargon of Akkad without notice, with no previous strikes on his account at the time. Although his videos remained on YouTube, he was unable to upload any new content, or even comment on or like & share videos from other users. The YouTube star has since regained access to his channel, which had sustained only one video strike.

Charlton (6,000+ subs) and WAPTEC (5,000+ subs) both had their channels terminated on February 24th. Titus Frost (30,000+ subs) lost his channel on the 26th I believe. On the 27th, both The Black Child & Richie From Boston had their channels terminated ('truther'/'conspiracy' channels), and I know at least Richie had quite a large following with over 100,000 subscribers, including myself. On the evening of the 27th, my channel, Jason Liberty, was also terminated, which I will go into in more depth in another post and video.

On March 1st, InfoWars contributor Jerome Corsi's channel (jrlcorsi) was terminated. Corsi, “who received White House support from back channel discussions,” had his channel restored not long after it was removed, but possibly not without help from within the Administration. Interestingly, along with Isaac Green and Jordan Sather, Corsi was also giving a lot of coverage to the Qanon disclosures. On March 2nd, Computing Forever reported that the following channels – Atheism is Unstoppable, Suit Yourself and Gary Orsum – had been terminated. On the same day, The Verdict (linked below) reported the following additional channel suspensions: Baked Alaska (33,900 subs), Defango (11,700 subs), and Nemo V (5,100 subs).

In early March, Jake Morphonios who is also an investigative journalist for the End Times News Network, had his main channel, Blackstone Intelligence Network (131,000 subs), terminated. Jake had been heavily covering the Florida shooting as well as a variety of other news stories, putting out a LOT of very good information, and I had been a subscriber until my account was taken down. Having gone through a somewhat lengthy process of appeals and then email discussions with an actual YouTube employee, Jake managed to 'force' YouTube to restore his channel, who withdrew two of the three original strikes. Sadly, the majority of channels which have been terminated are not having such luck.

Conclusion

There are also a large number of channels who have sustained two strikes, which means there is still a 2-3 month period wherein a single strike would instantly terminate any of these channels, something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. The censorship is only bound to get worse, as YouTube has now recently announced that they are changing their community guidelines to further restrict certain gun related videos.

This purge is not isolated to YouTube either. One blog I recently discovered, which has a tremendous amount of excellent information regarding the Florida shooting Cover Up/ False Flag/Hoax, reports that the blogger had both their original Blogspot blog deleted as well as two YouTube channels. Twitter and Facebook also have a long track record of censoring a variety of 'politically incorrect' content, and Twitter is notorious for shadow banning users and accounts.

There are many more channels who have recently been censored but have not lost their channels yet, and far too many videos removed from YouTube to even be able to keep track of. Among the most notable affected in this way is Alex Jones, whose main channel with over 2 million subscribers had received two strikes by March 5th. As far as I know, the Alex Jones Channel has yet to be deleted. I am also quite sure that there are more channel deletions that I am not yet aware of, particularly many smaller channels like myself. (I will update this page as I come across any deleted channels I have missed.)

As I have documented, this censorship campaign is not simply a targeting of extremist conspiracy theories of the alt-right, as CNN claims. Neither is it a purge aimed at hard-right conservatives, as many Trump supporters have claimed. Both conservatives and classic liberals have been affected. Both black and white content creators have been shut down. Both self-proclaimed Christians as well as Athiests have had their channels removed in this purge. Independent journalists, alternative media outlets, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, anti-war activists, conspiracy theorists, as well as both gun enthusiasts and gun rights activists have all been censored in some way recently, and are all being affected.

This purge is about a deliberate, planned campaign to silence all dissent against the corrupt establishment, and has nothing to do with party lines. This is not about Left vs. Right, it's about the battle being fought over free speech in America - Censorship vs. Dissent, Tyranny vs. Freedom. The censorship has been going on for far too long and it's time to put an end to it. Freedom of speech and of the press is for EVERYONE, not just for those people or news outlets we agree with.

Wake up America. It's time to #EndTheWarOnFreeSpeech.