New Delhi: “Why should we believe that there is a problem with our content when there was no reason given to us in YouTube’s notice on blocking our channel?” asks Shambhu Kumar Singh.
Singh runs National Dastak, an independent Hindi news outlet which on April 3 received a notice from YouTube, saying the video streaming platform had received a direction from the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) to block National Dastak’s channel.
YouTube said that the notice itself was confidential so they were unable to share it with Dastak.
“How can they send us such a notice?” asks Singh.
National Dastak was launched in 2015 and focuses on the issues of the Bahujan community and other marginalised sections whose voices, they claim, are often sidelined by mainstream media.
Although Dastak’s YouTube channel is still functioning and they are continuing their operations on the platform – including the publishing of content related to the elections – the YouTube notice has made them anxious about the future of their channel which has 9.41 million subscribers.
Singh said that this move is simply to silence the voice of Dalits, Bahujans and Adivasis. “I feel that the Manuvaadi people in the government have targeted our channel because it represents marginalised communities,” he said.
He also added that several channels are being targeted while the Model Code of Conduct is in place.
YouTube has allegedly also sent a similar notice to another platform, Article 19 India.
The Rule 15(2) of the Information Technology Rules 2021, read with Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which were cited by YouTube in the notice to Dastak were recently used to disarm ‘Bolta Hindustan’ and a story in The Caravan magazine.
Caravan magazine was ordered to take down its article on allegations of torture and murder against the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district. The magazine was told that if it fails to take down the article from its website within 24 hours, the entire website would be taken down.
‘De-monetised because of content’
Ashish Anand, senior journalist associated with the independent channel Indus News TV highlights the effect of this indirect form of blocking of channels.
“Either our reach will be throttled or the monetisation of our videos and posts won’t be approved by a platform or some sort of shadow banning will be put in place…all because we are bringing those facts and figures to the table which are wholly ignored by the mainstream TV and print media,” Anand told The Wire.
Anand said Indus News TV’s videos are no longer monetised and their reach is throttled.
These mainstream TV and print media outlets, are doing well, Anand said, because their “general role is that of a government broadcasting service and not of public broadcasting service.”
This allegation of social media channels not approving monetisation despite a channel complying with community guidelines was also levelled by Haseen Rehmani, founder of Bolta Hindustan, the Hindi news platform with close to 3 lakh subscribers, which was suspended.
Rehmani told The Wire, that even though their channel had never violated any guidelines, it had not been monetised.
Bolta Hindustan and Indus News TV have said that they have been victims of this alleged throttling both on YouTube and Facebook.
The suspended channels have content related to minorities and marginalised in common. Added to this is the fact that their monetisation channels are cut off.
The Narendra Modi government recently celebrated content creators through National Creators Awards which were handed out to 23 creators in 20 categories by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Decode’s analysis found that 15 of the 23 personalities who won the National Creators Award had posted content that falls in at least one of these three categories: religious content, meeting BJP leaders, or endorsing the ruling party’s politics or ideology.