Shoutout to my uncle who showed me a blocked news report from Venezuela last night

He's lived there for 15 years and pulled up a video about local water shortages that was totally scrubbed from YouTube in the US. I always assumed censorship was a China or Russia thing, you know? But he argued that every country buries stories that make their government look bad, just in different ways. Does anyone have examples of stories that got blocked in 'free' countries that surprised you?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin_wright21d ago

And I get that argument, but I think it kinda downplays how different the scale and intent of censorship can be. Sure, YouTube has its own rules and takes stuff down for copyright all the time, but that's not really the same as a government pressuring platforms to bury specific news reports that embarrass them. There's actually been reporting on US agencies asking social media companies to flag or remove content about things like vaccine side effects or election fraud claims - that's a lot more direct than just routine moderation. Plus your uncle probably knows the difference between a video getting lost in the algorithm and one that was actively reported and removed by people with influence. It's not a perfect comparison to China, but it's not nothing either.

morgan31621d ago

Hard to know what to make of a single video that got taken down, you know? YouTube scrubs stuff for all kinds of reasons that don't have to be some big government conspiracy. Copyright claims, spam bots, terms of service violations - that stuff happens constantly without anyone pulling strings. I've had music videos disappear for no obvious reason and then pop back up months later. Your uncle probably means well but one anecdote doesn't really prove a pattern of systematic censorship in the US. Media in every country has bias and gatekeeping but there's a pretty big gap between that and what goes down in places like China or Russia.