The video-sharing platform has difficulty policing its own policies
Maybe it’s time for YouTube to rethink the process it’s following on banning accounts and channels, as it seems to keep happening in different types of industries and without justification. For no apparent reason, YouTube has banned the official channel of Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com, the official channel of a website dedicated to cryptocurrency news, and the reason for the suspension was apparently “a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
The suspension occurred on June 13 at around 2:17 AM; it had over 40 thousand subscribers at the time it was suspended, according to what Ver told Cointelegraph. Within a few hours, the site sent an appeal to YouTube and, just a couple of days later, Ver was notified that its Bitcoin.com channel had been unterminated. But things didn’t end there. Ver said that “less than 30 minutes later someone falsely reported our channel for a copyright claim for a video that has been online more than three years.” It could be seen in screenshots shared by Ver that the video that was reported was titled “The Slow Criminalization of Peer-to-Peer Transfers,” and the claim was filed by ONErpm.
After this incident, Ver said that Bitcoin.com has been turning to other broadcasting alternatives. “This is an ongoing headache to deal with and makes us even more eager to support censorship-resistant platforms like memo.cash, and lbry.tv.,” added Ver. In a statement uploaded to Reddit, Ver said that he could have been reported by avid Bitcoin enthusiasts since he is a proponent of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) who criticizes Bitcoin for becoming a “store of value.”
