Josh Centers, the managing editor of the Apple focused technology website TidBITS, has become the latest person to have one of his videos taken down under YouTube’s controversial “harmful and dangerous policy.”
Earlier today, Centers posted that his video, which criticized cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s verification process and recommended alternatives, had been removed under this policy.
Centers describes the video as “completely benign” but YouTube took it down anyway and then slapped his channel with a warning.
The harmful and dangerous policy that YouTube cites is the same policy that was used to remove a video from popular true crime YouTuber Kendall Rae earlier this month.
In the wake of Rae’s video takedown, many in the true crime community suggested that this was a sign that true crime content is now at risk on YouTube. Rae appealed the decision but her appeal was rejected. The rejection confirmed that the removal wasn’t a mistake on YouTube’s part and created further doubts around the future of true crime content on YouTube.
This harmful and dangerous policy isn’t the only policy that’s creating uncertainty among YouTubers. YouTube updated its harassment policy earlier this month and then purged several videos as it started to retroactively enforce the policy.
The retroactive enforcement against comedy videos, political commentary videos, and videos criticizing other YouTubers combined with the updated policy which prohibit language that goes “too far” has left many YouTubers fearing that their genre no longer has a place on the platform.
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