Ever since OpIndia published a three-part video series by Niti n Rivaldo on YouTube, they have been facing attacks using YouTube’s review policy. After deleting and restricting the videos, now they have been subjected to censorship from search results on the website. The video series had explained how the discourse around the Kashmir issue is flawed mostly due to the excuses provided by the ‘liberals’.
First, the first video was made age-restricted, which means one has to login to YouTube and confirm being an adult before being able to watch the video. After few days, the third video was deleted from the video sharing site, citing violation of community guidelines as the videos contain few clips of terror attacks. OpIndia had appealed the decision to delete the video, and after reviewing the matter, YouTube decided to restore video, but with age-restriction like the 1st video.
But now it seems YouTube moderators have found another way the prevent people from watching the third video, which particularly focuses on how Media personalities like Barkha Dutt and other members of the intelligentsia whitewash Islamic terrorists regularly thereby giving them intellectual cover for the heinous acts of terror committed by them. Several users have reported that when they search for the videos on YouTube, only the first two videos are returned in search results, with the third video missing.
When we tried to search the videos ourselves, we also encountered the same result. The video is not deleted from YouTube, it is there with the age-restriction. But it does not appear in the search results even when searched using the exact words in its title, “Pulwama | Ep 3 – How media supports Islamic terrorists in Kashmir – by Rivaldo”, or any other combination of words related to the video.
This clearly shows that the video has been censored from YouTube search results, and if one does not know the link to the video, it can’t be watched. It can be noted that the video has been censored from YouTube search results only, and not from Google search results, where it still appears when searched using relevant keywords.
The video has been embedded below:
