TASS: Russian media watchdog demands Google unblock video on Russian MP’s YouTube channel. “Russia’s mass media watchdog Roscomnadzor said on Sunday it has demanded Google LLC unblock a video on the YouTube channel of Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov. The video host removed a Post Scriptum program from the Alexei Pushkov official channel. The video is now available on RuTube.”
Asia Times: HK media erase their archives amid rising arrests. “Several online media outlets in Hong Kong took down opinion articles and videos from their websites or said they would move out of the city after one more columnist of the Apple Daily was arrested at the airport on Sunday.”
Reuters: Google takes down maps targeting hundreds of Thais accused of opposing king. ” Google took down two Google Maps documents on Monday that had listed the names and addresses of hundreds of Thai activists who were accused by royalists of opposing the monarchy, the technology company said.”
Times of India: Social media companies to shut fake a/cs within 24 hours of complaint. “In a major decision that is likely to end the menace of impersonation on social media in India, the government has mandated that top companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have to remove accounts with fake profile pictures of known personalities and businesses, and even the general subscriber, within 24 hours of being notified of the same by the user or someone on his/her behalf.”
Reclaim the Net: Patreon deplatforms censored video archive altCensored for “hate speech”. “altCensored, a platform that archives videos that have been censored or limited by YouTube, has been booted by the fan-funding platform Patreon for ‘hate speech.’ The platform has received around 500,000 unique monthly visitors over the last year, according to estimates based on web analytics company SimilarWeb and altCensored’s server logs.” Platforms like altCensored do important work. YouTube content removal often leads to unintended consequences like removing evidence of war crimes.
Moscow Times: Russia Gives Google 24 Hour Ultimatum to Remove Banned Content. “Russia’s internet regulator has threatened to slow down Google services in Russia if it does not comply with requests to delete content within 24 hours, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency has reported. The federal communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said Monday that Google had failed to remove 20-30% of links to content which it says are prohibited in Russia — a controversial category which includes content promoting drug use and featuring child pornography, as well as posts Russia says encourage under-18s to attend unauthorized protests.”
New York Times: As Outbreak Rages, India Orders Critical Social Media Posts to Be Taken Down. “The new steps to muzzle online speech deepen a conflict between American social media platforms and Mr. Modi’s government. The two sides have tussled in recent months over a push by India’s government to more strictly police what is said online, a policy that critics say is being used to silence government detractors.”
The Wrap: YouTube Purges Florida Governor Video Over Claims Children Don’t Need to Wear Masks. “YouTube has deleted a video in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a handful of medical experts questioned the effectiveness of having children wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19. The video, which was removed on Wednesday, was of a recent roundtable discussion DeSantis moderated on the global response to the pandemic.”
CBC: Marketplace flagged over 800 social media posts with COVID-19 misinformation. Only a fraction were removed. “Marketplace producers, between Feb. 3 and Feb. 16, combed through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter — using the user tool to flag and report more than 800 posts that breach each company’s policies that cover, among other things, posting misinformation. The result: 12 per cent of the posts were labelled with warnings or taken down entirely. That number jumped to 53 per cent per cent only after Marketplace journalists identified themselves and shared the findings directly with the companies.”
Reuters: Facebook says took down 1.3 billion fake accounts in Oct-Dec. “Facebook Inc said on Monday it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December and that it had over 35,000 people working on tackling misinformation on its platform.”
Mashable: Facebook will remove posts praising Atlanta shooting . “According to the company, it’s designating the shooting as a ‘violating event.’ This basically means that Facebook will remove any content on its platform which praises or supports the shooting or the shooter. Such posts are in violation of the company’s policies on promoting or inciting violence.”
E&E News: Interior scrubs old pro-Trump tweets . “The Interior Department has put away some Trump-era tweets that officials now say strayed too far into political territory. Citing restrictions on the use of government social media sites, Interior acknowledged to E&E News that it had scrubbed certain overtly pro-Trump messages from the official @Interior handle.” The tweets have been preserved, just deleted as active tweets.
BBC: YouTube deletes 30,000 vaccine misinfo videos. “YouTube has removed more than 30,000 misleading Covid-19 vaccination videos in the past five months, it said. A YouTube spokeswoman said the videos contradicted vaccine information from the World Health Organization (WHO) or health authorities such as the NHS.”
Hongkiat: Delete Yourself off The Internet – 5 Tools to Try. “If you find something that you want removed from Google’s search engine, you can request Google to remove it from their search engine results with its URL Remover Tool. Outside of this, you will need to talk to the people who own and maintain the site to get your data removed. But if you’re only looking to reduce the visibility of your data online (because deleting yourself from the Internet completely is quite impossible) or want to delete some accounts that are no longer in your use, then these 5 tool can help you get started.”
Tubefilter: TikTok Removed Nearly 350,000 Videos For Violating Election Policies. “TikTok removed nearly 350,000 videos for violating its rules against election msinformation, disinformation, and manipulated media in the latter half of 2020, the platform revealed in its third transparency report. A further 441,028 videos were restricted from appearing in users’ For You feeds because they were flagged by fact-checkers, TikTok said.”
