YouTube is being criticized in court for censorship of two videos of an online discussion of the pandemic.
A preliminary injunction was issued by the Cologne Regional Court denouncing YouTube’s decision to delete two interviews among a series of interviews with experts and public figures about the COVID-19 pandemic.
According RT News, YouTube found two of those interviews unfit and erased them. The eliminated videos featured interviews with mathematics professor Stephan Luckhaus and neurobiologist Gerald Huther.
The German court called YouTube’s censorship “unjustified,” saying the platform failed to explain which parts of the interviews violated its community rules for health-related content.
Jan Schafer, the political director of the influential German tabloid Bild, hailed the court’s decision, calling YouTube’s increasingly broad use of censorship a “dangerous encroachment” on public discourse in Germany.
Bild was the first to obtain and cover the court injunction. It remains unclear how much influence the opinion of the German justice system will have on U.S.-based Google, the owner of YouTube.
This follows announcements that Google and YouTube would ban content related to climate change and vaccine misinformation.
A survey by Protocol earlier this year found that of 1,500 employees of big tech companies, 77% thought that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook had too much power. Forty percent also said that the tech companies do more harm than good.
Global internet freedom has also declined for 11 consecutive years, according to Freedom House. The organization also notes that free expression online is under tremendous strain.
Anthony Pompliano, co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital and host of "The Pomp Podcast," had his channel deleted for content YouTube cited as "harmful and dangerous.” The deleted video discussed cryptocurrency, and the account and videos have since been restored.