Russia Today banned on YouTube, Google gives no comment

World March 18, 2014, 14:07

“We are aware and dealing with the issue,” a representative of Google Corp. said

MOSCOW, March 18. /ITAR-TASS/. US-based Google corporation, which owns YouTube, “is dealing with the situation” around the blocking of Russia’s English-speaking channel Russia Today on the video hosting, Google representative Svetlana Anurova told Itar-Tass.

“We are aware and dealing with the issue,” she said. The corporation’s representative did not disclose the reasons for blocking the channel.

Editor in Chief of Russia Today Margarita Simonyan said the channel’s management has already filed a complaint with YouTube regarding the channel’s blocking on the video service. “We are currently waiting for the issue to be solved as soon as possible. We hope this was just a technical issue, and we’ll manage to recover access to our channel in the nearest hours,” the editor in chief added.

Margarita Simonyan wrote in her Twitter: “Our YouTube channel has been banned. I would like to remind you that this is the most popular news channel on global YouTube with over a billion views. Two years ago, on the same day, March 18, we were also banned.” “We hope this was a technical issue, not a “technical issue”,” she noted.

On Tuesday, YouTube has banned Russia Today’s page on the hosting. When trying to access the page, users see a message saying “the account has been blocked due to multiple serious violations of YouTube rules regarding spamming, games, misinformation or other violations”.

March 2012, RT’s account on YouTube was banned for 7 hours. Google representatives said then that it was a technical error.

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