By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Vitalik Buterin said that it is absolutely weird from the side of YoutTube to censor a Q&A video explaining Ethereum’s roadmap. Over the last two days, this video platform has been selectively banning several crypto-related channels.
Two days back, several crypto enthusiasts reported that YouTube has removed several crypto-related channels. The attack on these channels came without any prior warning as the video platform removed crypto videos suddenly.
The crypto channel owners said that YouTube removed the videos flagging them as “harmful and dangerous”. Moreover, one of the channel owners said YouTube flagged his video as “sale of regulated goods”. It has turned out that YouTube has also not spared several informational videos. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin lashed out at YouTube for removing a Q&A video that explains the roadmap for the platform.
And yes it was actually taken down, try clicking the link from here:https://t.co/kA2kgBq4Ou
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 26, 2019
Content creators are certainly not happy with YouTube over this uninformed activity. One of the content creators Chris Dunn said that he has been running his channel for 10 years. Moreover, his channel was very popular having over 200,000 subscribers.
We are yet to hear from YouTube coming up with a plausible reason for this explanation. The question remains that is this really a security measure from YouTube. Many analysts think that YouTube is now going hard after the industry.
Despite much regulatory pressure in the last two years, the crypto industry has refused to budge. Government bodies have been putting much pressure on the functioning of public cryptocurrencies calling them potential tools for money laundering. We agree that the crypto industry has its own challenges when it comes to dealing with external threats and thefts.
However, some enthusiasts still support cryptocurrencies because of the leverage they offer over the traditional banking systems. The low-cost and instant cross-border payment is one of the major USPs of digital currencies.
YouTube Smartly Choosing the Christmas Period
The timing of YouTube’s co-ordinated attack has been under question. While everyone was busy enjoying their Christmas holidays, the YouTube team smartly acted the same time to avoid any major backlash. By striking the crypto sector during the busiest time of the year, YouTube has minimized any sort of pushback.
Frankly, such a move coming from the video platform was unexpected. We will wait to see how YouTube is planning to resolve this issue amicably with the users. Well, a few reports suggest that this pre-emptive strike could be Google‘s way of making some space for itself in the financial industry.
As Google is making an aggressive push in the FinTech space, this could very much be a move to crush out the competition. It looks like YouTube has a lot of answering to do to defend its position.