YouTube Punishes Channel For ‘Harmful And Dangerous’ Video Quoting Hillary Clinton

YouTube recently demonetized a video that it had previously approved, which contained quotes from Republicans and Democrats alleging election vulnerabilities and crimes. The video's creator, Matt Orfalea, received an email from YouTube on June 7 stating that the video was "suitable for all advertisers" after a manual review.

However, a YouTube spokesman later informed The Federalist that the video was banned from generating ad revenue a few months later because it contained "demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral process." The spokesman did not specify which information in the video was deemed "demonstrably false."

Without any prior notification from YouTube, Orfalea discovered on August 21 that the video had been labeled as depicting or encouraging "harmful or dangerous acts" and presenting "situations that may endanger participants." The video consisted entirely of quotes from various public figures contesting election results from 2016 to 2020, including Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, TV reporters, and other Republicans and Democrats.

This same video had been demonetized and deleted by YouTube in November 2022. During that time, YouTube also demonetized and deleted similar videos on Orfalea's channel, including videos that were not public, as reported by Racket journalist Matt Taibbi. These actions resulted in YouTube giving Orfalea's channel a strike, with three strikes leading to a permanent ban from the platform.

Orfalea and Taibbi assert that the banned videos consisted of accurate news quotes from both Republicans and Democrats making claims of a "stolen election" and "election interference." Taibbi argued to Google that the video "could not possibly be violative of any 'misinformation' guideline" as it contained unaltered clips of public figures making public comments.

In an Aug. 31 livestream, Orfalea revealed that demonetization had significantly reduced his video income by 90 percent. He also pointed out that the video's reach appeared to have been artificially limited based on YouTube analytics.

The landscape for non-corporate media businesses has become increasingly challenging over the last several months, making it harder for independent media content to gain visibility. Social media platforms that were once effective for marketing and distribution now pose navigational difficulties, even with the use of paid boosting tools.

Recommendations generated by YouTube algorithms influence 70 percent of the content people see on the platform, which is more widely used by Americans than Facebook. Google, YouTube's parent company, controls 92 percent of global search results. Investigations have revealed that Google alters search results to favor left-leaning content, and YouTube's criteria for hiding information often align with the political left's perspective under the guise of combating "misinformation."

Google previously demonetized The Federalist from ad revenue in 2020, following pressure from a foreign left-wing organization.

Recent lawsuits, including those from state attorneys general and individuals like journalist Alex Berenson and doctors Aaron Kheriaty and Jay Bhattacharya, have revealed that social media companies, including YouTube, remove information disliked by Democrats at the request of federal officials. This censorship affects hundreds of millions of Americans and targets not only false but also true information.

Federal courts handling these lawsuits have found close connections and cooperation between federal national-security officials and mass-surveillance and mass-censorship efforts. These actions extend beyond individual figures like Hillary Clinton to official bodies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI, which have warned of foreign efforts to undermine U.S. elections through disinformation campaigns.