YouTube owner Google said 23 Sky News videos have been deleted, amongst more than 5000 items of Australian misinformation
YouTube has removed thousands of Australian videos including Pandemic misinformation broadcast by Sky News Australia for violations of the platform’s code.
Sky News boss Paul Whittaker slammed YouTube as frankly ridiculous while testifying to a federal parliamentary inquiry on Monday.
Why do they get to decide what is and isn’t news? he said.
YouTube owner Google, also giving evidence, said 23 Sky News videos have been deleted, amongst more than 5000 items of Australian misinformation.
The barred material included the promotion of “cures” and the denial that COVID-19 is a pandemic.
Sky News Australia was suspended from YouTube for seven days in August for material that “could cause real-world harm”, under the platform’s three-strikes policy.
The media giant had issued an apology in July after broadcaster Alan Jones and then Liberal MP Craig Kelly dismissed vaccines and claimed the Delta variant was less dangerous than the first strain.
Mr Whittaker said host Cory Bernardi was spoken to about his private tweet that claimed “ivermectin will set you free”, which the former conservative senator subsequently deleted.
Half a million Australians have petitioned parliament for a royal commission into the media giant.
Mr Whittaker told the hearing it was in the public interest that the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were discussed, particularly last year when there were no vaccines available. It’s a scientific debate that continues to this day.
Committee chair Senator Sarah Hanson-Young also grilled Google on the “COVID lies” she said Sky News had been spreading for more than a year, including on social media.
Google enforces its own COVID-19 misinformation code and says it has worked with health and media authorities in Australia and around the world.
Where there are videos that, without further context, assert that those drugs – ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine – are effective we remove them because of the danger and medical harm that could be caused to users, Google Australia spokeswoman Lucinda Longcroft said.
Between February 2020 and March 2021, more than 5000 “dangerous and misleading” videos traced to an Australian IP address were removed from YouTube, including the Sky News Australia material.
Ms Longcroft said most of the Sky News items were removed due to their “violation” of the COVID-19 misinformation code and two for violations of political integrity rules. They have been permanently deleted.
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