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How YouTube’s rules are used to silence human rights activists

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For more than a week now, a corner of YouTube has been frequently available to Kazakh dissidents and human rights observers in Xinjiang.

June 15th YouTube channel The films of “Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights” were overshadowed, and the video feed was replaced with a vague statement that the channel “ended up for breaking the Youtube community guidelines”. A few days later, the channel was reset without giving a public explanation. Then, a few days later, 12 of the channel’s oldest videos disappeared from the public feed.

Atajurt collects and publishes video testimonials from family members imprisoned in Chinese Xinjiang internment camps. To ensure the credibility of these video statements, each public testimony shows an identity card for the person testifying and for the relatives arrested. He also emphasizes the integrity of the organization, saying that Serikzhan Bilash is a prominent Kazakh activist and owner of the channel.

Atajurt has collected thousands of video testimonies from members of the missing Muslim Muslim family in Xinjiang. Witnesses show their identification to prove that they are real people.

Accuracy is especially important because of the lack of information coming from Xinjiang, but because the testimonies are often criticized by supporters of the Chinese Communist Party — Bilash says they are looking for any excuse to deny what the United Nations has. “called”serious human rights violations”In the province.

After the release of Atajurt, the video information is used by other organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Xinjiang Victims Database, which documents where arrests occur, the communities most affected, and individuals who have disappeared. A representative of the Xinjiang victims ’database told the MIT Technology Review that his project has been linked to Atajurt videos“ thousands of times ”.

For years, these videos — until 2018 — have not been a problem, at least not from a YouTube perspective. That changed last week.

“In-depth review”

“We have strict policies Those who ban harassment on YouTube, as well as doxing, ”a Youtube representative told the MIT Technology Review on Friday,“ We ​​are making a diligent effort to document important human rights cases around the world. We have them too politics those who do not support channel publishing Personally identifiable information to prevent harassment “.

Some videos, like this one, have been forcibly turned private by Youtube after it was accused of violating its “violent criminal organization” policy.

It was likely to show Atajurt’s identity documents, which he uses to confirm the veracity of people’s testimonies.

However, after the MIT Technology Review sent YouTube a list of questions about its June 15 removal and guidelines for moderating its content more broadly, YouTube reversed its stance. “After thoroughly analyzing the context of the video,” he reset the channel, “with a warning,” a company representative wrote in an email. “We … are working closely with this organization to remove personally identifiable information from the videos for reinstatement.”

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