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By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 12, updated below – With the large social media platforms like Google and Facebook vowing to use algorithms to prevent terrorist recruitment and for other purposes, the crudeness of results, intended or not, has come to the fore. Now Google's YouTube is engaged in implicit financial censoring of independent videos about censorship. Like many independent media, Inner City Press publishes its coverage and associated commentary not only on its website but on a number of third party platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Scribd and SoundCloud. YouTube is owned by Google, and like its parent allows publishes to monetize their material with advertisements.

But do YouTube and Google behind it engage in censorship? This week, as Inner City Press ramps up its fight against the eviction of its shared office in the United Nations while asking questions about UN corruption, it has received a series of e-mails from YouTube that its videos on these topics "cannot be monetized" with advertisements. These now included a video of Inner City Press asked UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq about Cameroon's Anglophone areas, where the Internet has been cut off for 55 days and counting. The e-mail said: "We didn't approve your video for monetization: 'ICP Asks UN about Cameroon and SG in Kenya.'"

[Update - after publication, Tweeting and extensive re-Tweeting of the above, Google's YouTube reversed on that one video and allowed monetization, while denying similar appeals on other Inner City Press UN Q&A videos. Watch this site.]

  This is the opposite of what Google and similar mega-platforms claim to be doing. Facebook, as another example, talks about flying Internet-distributing drones over Africa. So why haven't they done so over Southern Cameroons in the past 55 days? These platforms should be urged on these issues. On this censorship of the Press by denying or delaying monetization, it seems clear that someone or something has gotten Google's YouTube to do it. We'll have more on this.

   Last week, monetization was similar denied for an Inner City Press video about being ordered out of the UN Press Briefing Room for a "French only" briefing by outgoing French president Francois Hollande, murkily arranged by the UN's still holding-over spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

 On March 4, monetization not only of Q&As involving Sri Lanka and Ukraine and Yemen has been blocked - now, even a video from inside the UN Press Briefing Room, an exposé of UN censorship. Google's YouTube  wrote:

"We didn't approve your video(s) for monetization because the content in your video(s) or video details may not be advertiser-friendly.

"French Delegation Tells Press To Leave UN Briefing Room for Hollande, FUNCA Says No"

  Even after appeal, videos whose titles including the word "Nusra" for example are deemed ineligible for monetization.

This is no longer a mis-application of a terrorism screen. This is a pattern at Google, see here.
 
   These are video of questions and answers (sometimes) at the UN, of protests in the streets of New York, etc. Inner City Press has written,  to Monetization then to Press [at] YouTube.com:

“The videos you are saying are “not advertiser-friendly” are videos of media questions and answers with United Nations spokespeople and diplomats. They are news. The message sent yesterday and today said “you can request an additional review below” - this is a request for review. Look at the videos: they are Q&As in the UN Press Briefing Room.

This is also a request to be informed if it was any complaint to YouTube / Google which triggered this denial of monetization, and if so if it came from the UN or any[one else.]
I note that Reuters, got one of its anti-Press emails to the UN banned from Google Search with a frivolous DMCA filing: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/1457339# now [HRW] https://lumendatabase.org/notices/1457339#

Please confirm receipt and review the above and restore monetization, answering the question. Google and YouTube should not be involved in any form of censorship, including the denial of monetization of news footage."

   Now on February 26, YouTube has sent this:

"Hi Inner City Press, After reviewing your video, we’ve confirmed that the content in your video or video details aren’t advertiser-friendly. As a result, your video can’t be monetized.

"In Golan After UN Peacekeepers Hand Over Guns to Nusra, UN Won't Say If Ladsous Ordered It"

YouTube reserves the right to make the final decision about video monetization."

  So, like at the UN on unilateral decisions to target, evict and restrict particular media, and like some decisions by Twitter to which we will next turn, there is no appeal. (UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who has bragged about the UN's "use" of YouTube, ran out when Inner City Press asked about this, here.) This is UNacceptable. We'll have more on this.

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