YouTube has come under fire since the NGO Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights channel was blocked on June 15, ZDNet reports.

The presence of images of identity cards in the various videos of the NGO would be the cause of this "strike".

In any case, this is one of the reasons mentioned by YouTube to explain its decision.

Avoid harassment

Several speakers in the various videos indeed show their identity cards to prove their link with Uyghurs disappeared in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

According to the rules of the platform, the videos posted cannot contain information allowing to identify people.

“We have strict policies that prohibit harassment on YouTube, including doxing,” a YouTube representative told 

MIT Technology Review.

“We applaud responsible efforts to document important human rights cases around the world.

We also have policies that do not allow channels to post personally identifiable information, in order to prevent harassment.

"

The objective of this blocking was therefore to avoid any harassment.

A justification that is difficult to pass to some, especially to the authors of the NGO Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights.

The latter have also appealed for the blocking and deletion of their videos and several of them have been reinstated.

If the YouTube regulations do include a section concerning the disclosure of data allowing the identification of a person, it is above all a question of prohibiting this in the event that this disclosure is intended to harm the person.

The platform's policy also prohibits revealing private information about a third party individual.

However, here, it is the people themselves who share information about them.

YouTube's justification therefore does not fully hold water.

Various and varied accusations

In an interview with Reuters, one of the NGO's members said YouTube had requested that identity cards be blurred.

A request to which the NGO did not wish to comply, because it could have tarnished the credibility of the videos.

To avoid further YouTube strikes, the NGO saved its content on the Odysee blockchain-based video platform.

YouTube subsequently accused several of the channel's videos of potential violation of its policy on organized crime.

An accusation that is difficult to swallow for the NGO which gives a voice to the relatives of the victims of organizations that could be described as criminals.

China is indeed accused of persecuting the Uyghur Muslim population and other Muslim minorities in "re-education" camps located in the Xinjiang region.

These populations are also said to be subjected to forced labor under particularly difficult conditions.

Several actors affiliated with the Chinese and Kazakh governments would have mobilized to report the videos of the NGO, says the

MIT Technology Review.

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  • Testimony

  • China

  • Censorship

  • Youtube

  • High-Tech

  • Uighurs