Some China news
Is just too dangerous for YouTube
But we’re telling you anyway
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
I’ve been doing this show on YouTube since 2012.
And I’ve come to realize that YouTube is a lot like China. They’ve both got billions of people,
they love the color red, and they’re great at censoring things.
For example, last week we published an episode called
“Is Xi Jinping Destroying the Communist Party?”
Maybe some of you saw it. Some of you who have a YouTube account, are logged in, and are over 18.
Because YouTube demonetized and age restricted that video earlier this week.
Why? We don’t know. Because YouTube doesn’t tell you specifically
why they’re age restricting or demonetizing your videos.
They just use vague phrases like they don’t think
your content is in line with their community guidelines.
So now we have to guess. Was the latest episode of General Hostility too spicy for YouTube?
Was it this picture of Xi Jinping that’s unsuitable for the
under-18 crowd? Cover your eyes, kids!
We finally reasoned it was probably because we showed footage of Chinese
police dragging away Falun Gong protesters from Tiananmen Square.
And footage of Chinese police standing over blindfolded Uyghur prisoners.
Now we’re not showing these images because we think that five-year-olds
need to see the harsh reality of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.
That can wait until they’re at least six.
So if we don’t intend for kids to watch our videos, why do we care if they’re age restricted?
Well, age restriction means people can’t watch your video unless they’re logged in to YouTube.
It generally means views on the video go way down, because people won’t be able to find your video.
YouTube isn’t going to promote age-restricted videos.
So age restriction is a huge blow to us, because we want to reach as many people as possible.
YouTube is almost forcing us to not show the evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s
human rights crimes in order to actually reach people with our news coverage. That’s messed up.
By restricting this kind of information, YouTube is covering up for the Communist Party.
Even if that’s not what they mean to do.
By the way, we appealed YouTube’s decision. And they rejected our appeal.
They confirmed the video violated their community guidelines,
again without telling us how it violated the guidelines.
And said they know it’s disappointing,
but it’s their job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all.
A safe place for all—including the Chinese Communist Party.
Thanks, YouTube.
How far is this going to go?
Is YouTube going to age restrict all of our videos because we show Tank Man in our intro?
What’s that, Shelley?
YouTube age restricted an old episode we did on the Tiananmen Square Massacre?
Ok, so that joke got a little too real.
Like the Tiananmen example shows, this is hardly the first time YouTube
has restricted our content because it’s just too dangerous for people to watch.
But that’s not going to stop us. Because we’re going toe-to-toe with the Chinese regime.
We’re certainly not going to back down from a company that’s doing their dirty work for them.
Demonetization is the biggest way YouTube restricts our episodes. Technically,
you might see ads on a video that’s demonetized. Because YouTube calls it “limited or no ads.”
But in reality, demonetized videos get a fraction
of the ad revenue compared to a normal, monetized episode.
And that’s not all. We’ve noticed that when episodes are demonetized, they have a more
limited reach. Again, this is not just about making ad revenue so we can keep the show going.
It’s about letting more people know about what the Chinese Communist Party is doing
and how that affects their lives, no matter where they are in the world.
And that’s harder when the biggest video platform in the world is restricting our videos.
We definitely saw this during the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
When a million people marched in the streets in June 2019, we rushed to put out a video.
A video that was instantly demonetized.
Two days later, when police tear-gassed protesters for the first time, we rushed to put out a video.
Which was instantly demonetized.
Right after we published that video, Matt, Shelley, and I bought
one-way tickets to Hong Kong. We got on a plane that night,
because we were determined to cover the protests on the ground for as long as we could.
The first protest we covered was of several thousand mothers. There was no police violence.
Guess what? Demonetized.
We witnessed two million Hong Kongers marching through the streets
peacefully on Father’s Day. And we stayed up all night to get that video out.
Annnnd demonetized.
YouTube even went back and demonetized episodes that were previously monetized.
Like our interview with Hong Kong activist and Cantopop singer Denise Ho.
We published this before the protests even started.
Weeks later, demonetized.
This was driving us crazy. We were debating whether it was the footage
of the Hong Kong police violence that was causing YouTube to demonetize our videos.
YouTube actually responded to us and pointed us to their “sensitive events” policy.
Which says that even if you just talk about a sensitive event
without showing sensitive footage, your video will be demonetized.
When we asked if YouTube was considering the Hong Kong protests a “sensitive event,”
they didn’t answer.
The situation was so bad that a reporter even wrote a story
about how YouTube was demonetizing our coverage of the Hong Kong protests.
Why YouTube Keeps Demonetizing Videos of the Hong Kong Protests
And then a funny thing happened.
Usually after YouTube demonetizes an episode, you can appeared—once.
Which means your video is then reviewed by a human, instead of the algorithm. They might
restore monetization, or permanently demonetize the episode. And that decision is final.
But after the reporter started contacting Google and asking questions about our situation,
several episodes that had been permanently demonetized,
were magically remonetized. Including the Denise Ho interview.
And our episode on the 2 million person protest.
We finally left Hong Kong after a month. A large portion of our Hong Kong protest coverage
remains permanently demonetized.
But we did go back to Hong Kong later that year.
Chris Chappell here back in Hong Kong. We were
here back in June when this protest movement just began.
We covered protests with even more tear gas than the last time we were there.
So you can guess what happened to these new episodes. Demonetized.
By the way, a lot of you watching this episode may have contributed to the show during
our stays in Hong Kong, either on Patreon, PayPal, or during our YouTube livestreams.
Some people in Hong Kong even stopped us and gave us cash. Your support really kept us going.
But it wasn’t just our Hong Kong episodes that were getting permanently demonetized.
For example, we published an interview with a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist
about how Burmese women are trafficked in China.
Say it with me, demonetized.
And we weren’t alone, either. Other YouTubers covering China, including Hong Kong YouTubers,
were getting demonetized too. Especially during the coronavirus.
Hong Kong Content Creators and YouTube Spar Over Coronavirus-Related Fare
Which they protested.
But sometimes demonetization isn’t enough to stop people from talking
about dangerous topics like protests and viruses. So YouTube decided to go further.
When demonetization isn’t enough to stop people from covering dangerous topics,
YouTube age restricts videos, too. And it’s gotten a lot worse lately.
We’ve been on YouTube for almost ten years. But
70 percent of our age-restricted videos have come from the last three years.
Starting from the Hong Kong protests. In July 2019,
we covered the news of a triad-linked attack on protesters in a Hong Kong subway station.
Not only was the episode permanently demonetized before it was even published,
it was then age restricted too.
We also did another video that was a rundown of the
protest movement since 2003. Also age restricted.
YouTube did take off the age restriction on that video after we complained on Twitter.
But YouTube has since age restricted a variety of our episodes.
Like one on Confucius Institutes.
Giant sinkholes.
And several related to the coronavirus.
A lot of our episodes on the CCP virus got demonetized. Like this one from April 2020
where we talked about the US government investigating a possible lab leak.
Apparently questioning whether the virus leaked from a lab is a “harmful and dangerous act.”
Even worse than eating Tide Pods.
Until of course a year later, when it was suddenly ok to talk
about it. Funny how conspiracy theories sometimes just become regular theories.
In some cases, episodes would be restricted months after they were
uploaded. Like when we did an episode on how the coronavirus cure isn’t authoritarianism.
The episode was about how the world should not copy the Chinese Communist Party’s
authoritarian response to the virus. Obviously a dangerous idea that should not be spread.
Episodes which showed footage of China’s authoritarian virus response,
like their insane lockdowns, were also age restricted.
But YouTube didn’t stop there. For the first time, they started actually deleting some of our videos.
Like another one we did about China’s authoritarian response to the CCP virus,
which showed police slapping people who weren’t wearing masks.
After we publicized YouTube’s takedown, YouTube put the video back up again.
Now it’s just demonetized, age-restricted,
and black boxed too. Yes, there is a warning screen before you can watch this video.
Other episodes were removed months after they were published.
Likely because they were flagged by wumaos who were trying to interfere with our show.
In this episode, we did show Chinese authorities dragging people from their
home. But other media had the same footage on YouTube, without getting taken down.
YouTube put that episode back up. But then the next day, they took yet another episode down.
Before putting it back up.
And it gets worse. Back in February 2020, we did an interview on our podcast channel,
China Unscripted, with Laurie Garrett , a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist
who has covered epidemics like the Ebola outbreak in the ‘90s.
Last week, YouTube took that podcast down for “medical misinformation.”
There was no medical misinformation in that episode.
Sure, what we know about the virus has changed since February 2020. But no one is going to watch
something from two years ago for coronavirus medical advice. YouTube was deleting the
historical record because they thought it was medical misinformation. Now that is dangerous.
YouTube put that episode back up,
too. But that means they shouldn’t have taken it down in the first place.
Like I said earlier, we want China Uncensored to reach as many people as possible.
That’s why we started uncensoring China in the first place.
YouTube is not making that easy.
With their demonetization.
Age restriction.
And video removal.
I guess we’re just too dangerous. Which makes you dangerous, too. Because you’re watching this.
And if you’d like to keep watching this, make sure you’re subscribed to the China
Uncensored channel. Seriously, double check because people have been unsubscribed before.
Also hit the notification bell and choose “all.”
Because maybe YouTube will then notify you of at least some of our episodes.
We publish new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.
In addition to YouTube, we do publish our episodes on our own website, chinauncensored.tv.
I know many of you have suggested publishing on alternative platforms, like Odysee and
Rumble . We are actively working on that now and will be publishing on other platforms soon.
It does take a lot of work, and we are a small, independent media company. Only six people work
on China Uncensored. We are not funded by any other media organizations or large donors. And
with YouTube demonetizing and restricting our videos, we could not do this show without you.
If you can, please support China Uncensored on the crowdfunding website Patreon. We do offer
perks for contributions, including getting to ask me questions that I answer on the show.
Patreon contributions are per episode, but you can set a monthly limit. For more details,
visit patreon.com/Chinauncensored.
If you would prefer to not be on Patreon, or if you’d like to interact more with me
and other China Uncensored viewers, you can also join the China Uncensored community
on the social media platform Locals. You can watch our episodes ad-free on Locals.
We also do things like exclusive livestreams,
where we give you a look behind the scenes of the show.
Locals is a monthly subscription, or you can also make a one-time contribution.
Check that out at chinauncensored.locals.com.
We also take PayPal and Bitcoin. You can find out more on our website, chinauncensored.tv/support.
I understand that times are tough, and many of you can’t give a monetary contribution to the show.
It would help us a lot if you could even just share these episodes,
because YouTube sure isn’t doing that. So let’s get dangerous…together.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thank you so much for watching China Uncensored.