Without warning and in a treacherous move, YouTube blocked yesterday’s video calling on people to take part in the January 28 strike action.
We’ve just learned the formal reason, and it sounds bizarre: improper hashtags. We’ve never seen anything like this before.
The hashtags were #strike #Navalny2018 #January28 and similar ones. How can they possibly be declared “improper”? We’ve sent letters and are waiting for answers.
I have two possible explanations:
The Putin-Prigozhin internet troll factory found a YouTube algorithm vulnerable to manipulation and learned how to trigger automatic blocking through mass complaints from its bots.
or, more likely,
The authorities have “moles” (insiders, call them what you like) in YouTube’s Russian and/or international operations, helping manipulate the system and explaining how to do it. In fact, everyone has already noticed this: the Kremlin is carrying out an operation to take over this platform. Their pathetic propaganda videos are constantly at the top. Political content is being blocked more and more often. Meduza (an independent Russian news outlet) even published a report about it.
So, all in all, nothing new. We saw it happen with LiveJournal, then VKontakte, then Yandex. It would be strange if they didn’t try to take control of YouTube too.
You know what to do. They blocked the video so people wouldn’t join the groups. So just go to this post, find your city, and join the January 28 action group.
Share the link to the post and bring your friends and acquaintances into these groups.
They will do everything they can to obstruct our strike. We can overcome this, but we have to put in the work.