Watchdog says YouTube ignores demands to delete fakes

MOSCOW, Jul 19 (PRIME) -- YouTube video hosting service ignors demands of the Federal Service for Communications, IT, and Mass Communication Oversight to delete materials with fakes, including the fakes on the coronavirus, the watchdog said in a statement on July 18.

“The YouTube administration ignores demands of the authority to delete the materials that contain fakes, including the fakes on the coronavirus. Nine materials on the subject remain undeleted,” the service said.

Under the Russian legislation, if an online platform fails to comply with a demand of the service to restrict access to prohibited information within 24 hours, the platform may be fined for 3–8 million rubles. If the platform repeats the violation, the service may issue a fine ranging from a twentieth to a fifth of the platform’s annual turnover.

YouTube restricts access to the materials of Russian mass media more often than any other platform, and leads in failures to delete illegal content. The service discovered 30 cases of censorship of Russian media, and issued more than 24,000 demands to Google for its subsidiary YouTube to delete prohibited content. Youtube failed to delete around 5,000 materials, the online watchdog said.

The watchdog has sent a letter to Google demanding it lift all restrictions on the channel of Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov. YouTube deleted an episode of the Postscriptum series published on his channel. These actions violate the principles of free distribution of information, they are an act of censorship that violates the Russian constitution and laws, the service said.

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