Google Sends Powerful Migrant Crisis Video by Polish Government to ‘YouTube Jail’

YouTube has ‘quarantined’ a hard-hitting video on Europe’s migrant crisis released by Poland’s conservative government, as part the platform’s crackdown on “hate speech and violent extremism”.

The Polish Ministry of Interior and Administration’s video has been placed in a controversial state designed by YouTube to limit access to videos it says contain “supremacist” or “extremist” content, but which don’t break any of the platform’s rules.

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But YouTube has now placed the powerful video in “limited state” — a condition designed to severely reduce the potential audience for “borderline” content. Videos placed under this system are unsearchable, impossible to embed on other sites, and removed from users’ recommended videos lists.

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Google unveiled the policy in August among a raft of new measures which the video-sharing website said it will use to counter “extremism”. It announced a partnership with 15 “expert NGOs and institutions” — including the Council of Europe’s left-wing No Hate Speech Movement and George Soros-linked groups — who will direct them in identifying objectionable content.

Explaining the system, YouTube said it bans content which “promotes violence or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes”, as well as “content intended to recruit for terrorist organizations, incite violence, celebrate terrorist attacks, or otherwise promote acts of terrorism.”

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