Monday morning of June 28th, Right-Wing Watch, an organization dedicated to censoring right-wing social media accounts (or radical right political organizations, as they claim), tweeted: “Our efforts to expose the bigoted view and dangerous conspiracy theories spread by right-wing activists has now resulted in [YouTube] banning our channel and removing thousands of our videos. We attempted to appeal this decision, and YouTube rejected it.”
It was an ironic move, given that the leftist organization diligently dedicates itself to de-platforming conservative figures and outlets. The organization shared a screenshot of what they claimed to be a message from YouTube which read “We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines” then it continued “Because of this we have removed your channel from YouTube.”
Tim Pool, an outspoken voice on the subject of social media censorship, described the decision as “perfectly ironic.” He tweeted: “You got burned by the fire you started,” he wrote, “We warned you that this is exactly what would happen if you push for censorship.”
Journalist Andy Ngo responded, “[Right Wing Watch]’s YouTube channel has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of the platform’s community guidelines. RWW itself works to get others banned & has mocked those who speak about cancel culture.”
According to The Daily Beast, however, the move by YouTube was a mistake. Right-Wing Watch tweeted the complaint on Monday morning, leftists threw a fit, and the channel was reinstated by Monday afternoon.
“Right Wing Watch’s YouTube channel was mistakenly suspended, but upon further review, has now been reinstated,” a YouTube spokesperson said, according to The Daily Beast. The outlet added that “the social-media site also suggested that the issue was a mistake due to high volume of content and that they attempted to move quickly to undo the ban.”
The leftist watchdog was launched in 2007 to thwart right-wing voices, and it claims to be “dedicated to monitoring and exposing the activities and rhetoric of right-wing activists and organizations in order to expose their extreme agenda.”
