YouTube bans the “RT” Arabic account

Editor-in-chief of the Russian news agency “Russia Sevodnia” and the TV channel “RT”, Margarita Simonyan, said that YouTube blocked the account of the RT channel in Arabic.

“YouTube has blocked our RT channel in Arabic with 5.5 million subscribers and nearly 3 billion views,” Simonyan wrote on her Telegram channel on Wednesday.

And in recent months, foreign platforms have repeatedly blocked Russian media accounts.

For example, Facebook has banned the account of the agency “Balt News” without showing any reason. In October, Twitter classified RT material about the US elections as potentially misleading, and before that it removed the RIA Novosti account from search results.

Previously, Twitter blocked the “RT” and “Sputnik” accounts in the same way. Likewise, Facebook banned RT France’s interview with a member of the European Parliament.

The Russian Foreign Ministry indicated that obscurantism hinders the work of the Russian media in the European Union countries.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had previously commented on the US information technology companies’ banning of content from Russia, noting that after taking such a decision, the platforms became invalid.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “The digital content is subject to arbitrary and indiscriminate censorship by some intermediaries without a court decision or a specialized competent authority.”
“At the same time, the same platforms continue to entertain the world with calls to preserve freedom on the Internet and the harm caused by restrictions on content distribution,” she wrote.

“Whenever politically inappropriate material is withdrawn from Internet circulation by” brokers “and censored, Zakharova noted,” faster and more stringent regulatory restrictions will be introduced on the actions of platforms around the world, “adding that” the restrictive measures they take transcend regional boundaries and contradict them. ” With Washington’s international obligations to guarantee freedom of expression. “