On May 6, 2020, at least five YouTube channels belonging to key Russian opposition leaders and platforms received notifications from YouTube that some of their content had been removed due to its being qualified as «spam, deceptive practices and scams».
They included:
Ilya Yashin (343k YouTube subscribers)
Vladimir Milov (218k YouTube subscribers)
Leonid Volkov (117k YouTube subscribers)
Novaya Gazeta (277k YouTube Subscribers)
Sota Vision (248k YouTube Subscribers)
Most likely, there are other Russian pro-democracy channels that have received similar notifications at the same time, and we are putting together the list of all affected by this censorship campaign.
The identical letters received from YouTube by the five account holders stated:
«Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy. We’ve removed the following content from YouTube:
URL: https://votesmart.appspot.com/«
YouTube has removed urls from descriptions of videos posted on these accounts that linked to Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting website (votesmart.appspot.com).
By doing this, and to our great shock and disbelief, YouTube has acted to enforce the Kremlin’s policies by qualifying Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting system and its website as «spam, deceptive practices and scams».
This action has not only technically disrupted communication for the Russian civil society which is now under a deadly siege by Putin’s regime, but it has rendered a serious and lasting damage to its reputation and legitimacy of Smart Voting approach.
In reality, Smart Voting system is not a spam, scam or a «deceptive practice», but instead it’s a fully legitimate system of choosing and supporting candidates in Russian elections who have a chance of winning against the ruling «United Russia» party candidates. There’s absolutely nothing illegal, deceptive or fraudulent about the Smart Voting or any materials on its website.
We don’t know the reasons behind such YouTube actions, but they are an unacceptable suppression of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the Russian people and help the Kremlin’s suppression of civil rights and freedoms by banning the Smart Voting system and not allowing free political competition with the ruling «United Russia» party.
This is an extremely dangerous precedent in an environment where opposition activities in Russia are being literally outlawed; key opposition figures are jailed, exiled, arrested and attacked with criminal investigations; independent election campaigning is prohibited; and social media networks remain among the very few channels still available to the Russian opposition to communicate with the ordinary Russians.
We demand a swift and decisive action on this matter from the international community, to make sure that YouTube corrects its stance toward Russian opposition channels, and ensures that such suppression of peaceful, legal pro-democracy voices does not happen again.