A Journalist Reported From Palestine. YouTube Deleted His Account Claiming He’s an Iranian Agent

In February without warning YouTube deleted the account of independent British journalist Robert Inlakesh His YouTube page featured dozens of videos including numerous livestreams documenting Israel s military occupation of the West Bank In a decade covering Palestine and Israel he had captured video of Israeli bureaucrats demolishing Palestinian homes police harassing Palestinian drivers and Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian civilians and journalists during protests in front of illegal Israeli settlements In an instant all of that footage was gone In July YouTube deleted Inlakesh s private backup account And in August Google YouTube s parent company deleted his Google account including his Gmail and his archive of documents and writings The tech giant initially claimed Inlakesh s account violated YouTube s neighborhood guidelines Months later the company justified his account termination by alleging his page contained spam or scam content However when The Intercept inquired further about Inlakesh s situation nearly two years after his account was deleted YouTube provided a separate and wholly different explanation for the termination a connection to an Iranian influence campaign YouTube declined to provide evidence to sponsorship this claim stating that the company doesn t discuss how it detects influence operations Inlakesh remains unable to make new Google accounts preventing him from sharing his video journalism on the largest English language video platform Inlakesh now a freelance journalist acknowledged that from to he worked from the London office of the Iranian state-owned media organization Press TV which is under U S sanctions Even so Inlakesh explained that should not have led to the erasure of his entire YouTube account the vast majority of which was his own independent content that was posted before or after his time at Press TV A inhabitants Google document from the month Inlakesh s account was deleted notes that the company had in the past few days closed more than accounts it alleged were linked to Iran that had posted content critical of Israel and its war on Gaza The company did not respond when solicited specifically if Inlakesh s account was among those mentioned in the document Inlakesh mentioned he felt like he was targeted not due to his former employer but because of his journalism about Palestine especially amid the increasingly common trend of pro-Israeli censorship among Big Tech companies What are the implications of this not just for me but for other journalists Inlakesh informed The Intercept To do this and not to provide me with any information you re basically saying I m a foreign agent of Iran for working with an outlet that s the implication You have to provide chosen evidence for that Where s your documentation Misdirection and Lack of Answers Over the past couple years YouTube and Google s explanations given for the terminations of Inlakesh s accounts have been inconsistent and vague YouTube first accused Inlakesh of severe or repeated violations of our Region Guidelines When a Google employee Marc Cohen noticed Inlakesh s community outcry about his account termination in February he decided to get involved Cohen filed a assistance ticket on Google s internal issue tracker system the Buganizer asking why a journalist s account was deleted Failing to get an answer internally Cohen went constituents with his questions that March After drawing the attention of the YouTube gang on Twitter he disclosed he eventually received an internal response from Google which claimed that Inlakesh s account had been terminated owing to scam deceptive or spam content Cohen who resigned from Google later that year over its aid of the Israeli regime s genocide in Gaza announced had he not gotten involved Inlakesh would have been left with even less information They get away with that because they re Google Cohen declared What are you going to do Go hire a lawyer and sue Google You have no choice When Inlakesh s Gmail account was deleted this year Google reported his account had been used to impersonate someone or misrepresent yourself which Google disclosed is a violation of its policies Inlakesh appealed three times but was given no response Only after The Intercept s inquiry into Inlakesh s incident did Google shift its response to alleged Iranian influence This creator s channel was terminated in February as part of our ongoing investigations into coordinated influence operations backed by the Iranian state a YouTube spokesperson narrated The Intercept The termination of his channel meant all other accounts associated with Inlakesh including his backup account were also deleted YouTube explained When The Intercept sought YouTube to elaborate on the reason behind the account deletions such as which specific content may have flagged the account as being linked to an Iranian state influence operation a YouTube spokesperson replied that YouTube doesn t disclose specifics of how we detect coordinated influence operations and instead referred The Intercept to Google s Threat Analysis Group s quarterly bulletins TAG is a company within Google that describes itself as working to counter government-backed hacking and attacks against Google and our users Google s Threat Analysis Group s bulletin from when Inlakesh s account was first terminated states that in February a total of YouTube channels were deleted as a consequence of an inspection into coordinated influence operations linked to Iran Four of these accounts the document notes were sharing content which was critical of the Israeli cabinet and its actions in the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and had shared content depicting alleged cyber attacks targeting Israeli organizations Google mentioned in the document that the other terminated YouTube channels had shown content supportive of Iran Yemen and Palestine and critical of the US and Israel A Pattern of Censorship Google has a long-standing and well-documented practice of censoring Palestinian content or content critical of the Israeli establishment in addition to evidence of human rights abuses in other conflicts Such censorship has only exacerbated during Israel s genocidal war on Gaza The company deploys various methods to censor content such as teams of experts who manually review content automated systems that flag content reviews of U S sanction and foreign terror organization lists as well as takedown requests from governments For the past decade Israel s Cyber Unit has openly run operations to convince companies to delete Palestine-related content from platforms such as YouTube Related Israeli Group Indicates It s Working With Big Tech Insiders to Censor Inflammatory Wartime Content Among U S allies Israel had the highest percentage of requests resulting in takedowns on Google platforms with a nearly percent takedown rate according to Google s information since This rate outpaces countries like France Germany the United Kingdom and Google s home country the United States Absent from Google s community reports however are takedown requests made by individual users a highway often weaponized by the Israeli cyber unit and internally by pro-Israel employees The scale of content deleted specifically due to U S sanctions is also complicated to quantify since such decisions happen without transparency A modern probe by The Intercept revealed that YouTube quietly deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights organizations due to the Trump administration s sanctions against the groups for assisting the International Criminal Court s war crimes incident against Israeli personnel The terminated pages accounted for at least videos erased various of which spotlighted alleged human rights abuses by the Israeli regime Dia Kayyali a machinery and human rights consultant declared that in the past several years as Big Tech platforms have relied more on automated systems that are fed U S sanction and terror lists rights groups have seen an increase in the number of journalists within the Middle East and North Africa region who have had their content related to Palestine removed from YouTube even when the content they post does not violate the company s policies The same could have happened with Inlakesh s account Kayyali explained And that s part of the challenge with automation because it just does a really bad job of parsing content content that could be graphic anything that has any reference to Hamas Kayyali declared Hamas is included within the U S foreign terror organization list and Iran remains one of the largest part sanctioned countries by the U S establishment Google and other Big Tech platforms rely heavily on U S sanction lists in part to avoid anticipated liability from the State Department But such caution is not reliably warranted mentioned Mohsen Farshneshani principal attorney at the Washington D C -based Sanctions Law Center Related YouTube Quietly Erased More Than Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations Multinational corporations like Google tend to lean toward overcompliance with sanction regulations often deleting content even when it legally is not required to do so harming journalists and human rights groups revealed Farshneshani Under U S law in the Berman Amendment to the International Urgency Economic Powers Act informational materials in this affair reporting and journalism are exempt from being subject to sanctions Deleting an entire account is far from what the statutes or the regulations ask of U S entities Such a carveout should have protected Inlakesh s page from being deleted Farshneshani noted Google likely could have taken down specific videos that raised concern or demonetized specific videos or the entire account he reported Inlakesh commented that years before terminating his videos and account YouTube had demonetized specific of his content depicting Israeli military violence Deleting an entire account is far from what the statutes or the regulations ask of U S entities Farshneshani revealed The exemption is meant for situations like this And if these companies are to uphold their part of the bargain as brokers of information for the greater global society they would do the extra leg work to make sure the stuff stays up State-Sponsored Media While YouTube and Google have not stated whether Inlakesh s history with Press TV played a factor in the deletion the Iranian state-funded outlet has long been under Google s scrutiny In Google temporarily deleted Press TV s YouTube account before permanently deleting the channel in along with its Gmail account amid the first Trump administration s sanctions campaign against Iran The Biden administration in seized and censored dozens of websites tied to Iran and in placed sanctions on Press TV due to Iran s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters after the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini Press TV also has been accused by rights groups and journalists for filming and airing propaganda videos in which individuals detained by Iran are coerced to confess to alleged crimes in recorded interviews as a part of the cabinet s attempts to justify their imprisonment or execution Press TV did not respond to The Intercept s request for comment Out of the multiple videos on his YouTube account Inlakesh recalled only two being associated with his work for Press TV a documentary critical of the Trump deal on Israel Palestine and a short clip about Republicans Islamophobic attacks on Rep Ilhan Omar D-Minn in The rest either predate or postdate his stint at Press TV Press TV s U K YouTube channel at times appears listed as an associated channel in archival versions of Inlakesh s personal YouTube page A YouTube spokesperson stated that YouTube uses various signals to determine the relationship between channels linked by ownership for enforcement purposes but did not clarify what the specific signals were Inlakesh maintained that he had editorial independence while at Press TV and was never directed to post to his personal YouTube page Jillian York the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated she understood Google s need to moderate content but questioned why it deleted Inlakesh s account rather than using its procedures of labeling state-sponsored content a system that itself has been plagued with problems More labels more warnings less censorship York noted The political situation around Palestine has made it such that a lot of the Silicon Valley-based social media platforms don t seem particularly willing to ensure that Palestinian content can stay up she noted Read our complete coverage Israel s War on Gaza Killing the Narrative Inlakesh explained he lost several documentaries about Israel and Palestine that were hosted exclusively on YouTube However what he lamented majority was the loss of footage of his independent coverage from the West Bank including livestreams that document alleged Israeli military abuses and were not backed up elsewhere One such video he explained was a livestream from a protest at the major Israeli settlement of Beit El on February against President Donald Trump s lopsided annexation plan for Israel and Palestine Through the haze of tear gas Inlakesh filmed Israeli soldiers camped out at a nearby hill aiming their guns at the crowd of mostly children throwing rocks And then you see the children drop Inlakesh recalled followed by the bang of a gunshot Paramedics rushed over to retrieve the children as Inlakesh followed behind In all Inlakesh noted he filmed Israeli military gunfire hit three Palestinian children a likely war crime violation leaving them with wounds to the arms legs and torso You re killing part of the narrative Inlakesh disclosed You re actively taking away the citizens s ability to assess what happened at a critical moment during the history of the conflict The post A Journalist Broadcasted From Palestine YouTube Deleted His Account Claiming He s an Iranian Agent appeared first on The Intercept