YouTube has managed to make another enemy for itself thanks to Google’s giant video platform’s unrelenting, multi-year, overzealous censorship of a range of topics, prominently information and debate around coronavirus and the handling of the pandemic.
German Member of EU Parliament (MEP) Christine Anderson has decided to sue after two of her videos got blocked in September last year, ostensibly for mentioning Big Pharma heavy-weights in an unfavorable context.
The videos came in a series, “EU Special Committee on Covid Pandemic,” and were titled, “Deputies are fed up! – Big Pharma under cross-examination!,” “Lesson learned? – Politics further beyond reality!”
According to Anderson, the videos were taken during European Parliament (EP) public sessions of the said special committee. The MEP further explains her decision to sue by saying that the reason given by YouTube for this instance of censorship was (the usual) flimsy reference to “medical disinformation,” with no further clarification.
But the removal of the two videos was not the end of it: YouTube warned Anderson she would be permanently suspended (this is her MEP account) should another video be flagged along the same lines. And this threat is what spurred the parliamentarian to take legal action.
As for the two censored videos, they showed representatives elected by EU voters from 27-member states take part in a debate, where Anderson and several others had questions for AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, or Sanofi Pasteur – who profited exorbitantly from selling Covid vaccines, while the MEPs said effectively misleading those who bought/received them.
The discussion heard fears that people were on the one hand lied about the effectiveness of these hastily put together vaccines, and on the other, thanks to the lack of proper trial and testing period and procedures, possibly put at risk.
Not only that, but these companies that earned billions here managed to place all liability for anything going wrong on governments, who in turn placed in on the citizens getting the jab, who did so voluntarily (yet under tremendous public pressure and ostracizing through restricted access, etc.)
Clearly, not the questions that YouTube wants to be asked in the videos appearing on its platform. But when the MEP’s lawyers got involved, the two videos were eventually reinstated.
But, Anderson wrote in a statement, “YouTube has not yet complied with my requests to provide a definition of the so-called ‘medical misinformation’ as well as to comment in more detail on the blockings.”
And for that reason – “I have now filed an action for an injunction and declaratory judgment against YouTube with the competent district court in my hometown of Fulda.”
“On the one hand, this is intended to ensure that such blockings are not repeated and, on the other hand, to establish that the previous blockings were unlawful,” said Anderson.
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