On June 25th, Atheist Republic's YouTube channel received its first strike, for allegedly violating the platform's "Hate Speech" policy. On the same day, we received notice that our re-application to YouTube's monetization program was rejected.
The Atheist Republic (AR) YouTube channel had previously been fully demonetized in early March 2021 for "harmful or hateful content," without YouTube explicitly specifying what content was hateful, or towards what protected group. In response, before re-applying for monetization, the AR team deleted over 500 videos in a blind attempt to remove any content that YouTube's algorithms could mistakenly flag as harmful. The AR team believes that the channel was penalized with this most recent strike due to YouTube's review of the channel as a standard part of the application for re-monetization.
Then in late March, the channel received a community guideline warning for spreading "medical misinformation." This warning was about a video where the AR News team was actively trying to fight the medical misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine that a religious organization was spreading, the exact opposite of what YouTube accuses! In this video, the news team stated several times to follow and rely on medical experts' advice and recommended following the WHO guidelines, none of which falls outside of YouTube's community guidelines. AR submitted an appeal of this warning that explained that the video was not a violation of any policy. The appeal was rejected within mere minutes, too quickly for an actual human to review all the information that was included in the explanation.
In this most recent violation strike, YouTube specifically flagged a video that was a part of Atheist Republic's weekly news show. In this video, the AR News team discussed a story about the contention surrounding a woman who left England when she was a child to join ISIS, and if she should be allowed entry back to the United Kingdom to be able to fight in court to overturn the decision that stripped her of her British citizenship.
This video did not violate YouTube's hate speech policy. The policy of hate speech is defined as "content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people, content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group." This video did not glorify or incite violence or encourage hatred against any individual or protected group as defined by YouTube. This video was specifically made to defend the human rights of protected minority groups and their right to due process under the law, again the exact opposite of what we have been accused of. You can see for yourself the video that received the strike here.
The result of YouTube's actions against our channel is that Atheist Republic can no longer cover the controversial stories that are the MOST important for people to discuss openly and thoughtfully. This channel is very successful in its mission to change people's minds on difficult topics, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to undertake this vital work on YouTube's platform.
How can you help? Here's how:
These erroneous strikes and unsuccessful appeals highlight the importance of a human review of the penalizations that Atheist Republic faces and an advocate within the company. We are currently searching for contacts within YouTube who can help us with all these incorrect violations that have been handed down to us. If you work at YouTube or know someone in your network who works for YouTube, please reach out the Atheist Republic's CEO Susanna McIntyre via her email, Susanna@AtheistRepublic.com
We are confident that any employee at YouTube who reviews this video will see that this was an incorrect violation.
