Since nobody has noticed or documented a Google policy of banning YouTube videos that are too funny, let’s go with “too on-target” as the reason that Google deleted a popular YouTube channel, the RutersXiaoFanQi channel, devoted to satirically slapping China autocrat Xi Jinping.
Some of RutersXiaoFanQi’s videos survive in lesser-known YouTube channels. (Here is one. Here is another.) The approach of the videos seems to be to keep throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Apparently, the ratio of sticking to falling flat was too high for Xi and Google.
Unfair to Google? Maybe. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes.
Did Google just automatically delete the channel after having received a certain number of complaints about copyright violations from Xi’s offices? Or did Google honchos sit around an oak conference table, mull all the variables, and solemnly conclude “We simply must appease the Xi regime!”?
YouTube did not respond to an inquiry from Radio Free Asia about the matter. But RutersXiaoFanQi had received a notice stating that “Your YouTube account has been shut down following repeated copyright warnings,” presumably pertaining to music used in the videos.
It is unlikely, though, that various owners of whatever tunes the channel used bothered to lodge any complaints. It is much more likely that, as RFA speculates, the censors of Xi’s regime are exploiting YouTube’s system for reporting copyright infringements.
And that Google’s YouTube is taking the easy way out.
