Tim Pool, a well-known podcaster, has shed light on another prominent censorship action taken by YouTube. With retrospective effect, a couple of his most popular episodes of the Timcast IRL podcast have fallen prey to YouTube’s enforcement protocol. Podcast episodes that hosted personalities such as Joe Rogan, Michael Malice, and Alex Jones have now been eliminated from the platform, despite being on the platform for the last three years.
In Pool’s words, “Youtube has declared war on Timcast IRL retroactively enforcing rules against our 2 biggest shows ever featuring Joe Rogan, Michael Malice, and Alex Jones.”
YouTube’s justification behind this unexpected action, according to Pool, rested on baseless grounds.
A glance back at one of the condemned episodes that aired in 2021 reveals a variety of subjects being explored in a conversation between Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Blaire White, and Michael Malice. Topics ranged from coverage and insights on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial to discussions on the emergent border crisis.
In a video about this issue, Pool voiced serious concerns regarding YouTube’s handling of its platform policies, which could potentially lead to significant changes in how he and others approach online content creation. Pool revealed that the inconsistencies in YouTube’s enforcement actions have prompted him to explore business negotiations with alternative platforms.
According to Pool, the issue began when his show, along with many others on YouTube, experienced erratic behavior in terms of view counts. “Just yesterday, many people noticed the view count on the show was going all wild and crazy,” Pool stated, highlighting that this was a widespread issue affecting numerous channels. This was followed by a more severe incident where the view counts on videos significantly dropped without explanation.
Pool expressed his dissatisfaction with how YouTube is managing its relationship with its content creators. “I told Google, I cannot run a business. If this is how you treat your business partners, this is an ‘f you’ to me and a threat,” he remarked. Pool described a situation where YouTube issued a warning on his channel and demanded he take a class to understand the alleged rules he had broken—rules he claims he did not violate.
The platform’s recent actions have led Pool to fear a possible permanent ban, as YouTube indicated that any future infractions could lead to severe penalties. “We are prepared to permanently ban you. If we can find three more videos over the past four years that we can interpret as breaking the rules, your show is permanently banned in every respect off of YouTube,” Pool said, speaking of YouTube’s attitude towards even its top talent.
Pool’s concerns reflect a broader unease among YouTubers over unpredictable and heavy-handed policy enforcement by the platform, especially as it undertakes retroactive reviews of content from years ago.
