German actors expressed their thoughts and feelings about the China coronavirus on YouTube, unfortunately, YouTube didn’t like their thoughts and so they were censored. But the courts in Germany decided that YouTube is not the purveyor of truth and mandated no more censorship from YouTube.
In Germany, a group of actors expressed their opinions of COVID and the government’s actions related to COVID:
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Dozens of prominent German actors have banded together as part of the “allesaufdentisch” (everything on the table) freedom of expression campaign to demand a more open discussion on the Coronavirus and the controversial government policies, rules and regulations. Their statements were posted in the form of short videos on YouTube.
In recent months, views critical of government Corona policies and vaccines have been suppressed by the major media.
“Increasing concern” over political actions
At their allesaufdentisch site, the group of leading actors, performers, artists state: “We are watching the development of political action in the Corona crisis with increasing concern. Many experts have not yet been heard in the public Corona debate. We would like to see a wide-ranging, fact-based, open and factual discourse and also an equally wide-ranging discussion of the videos.”
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Each actor posted a YouTube video criticizing the current suppressive policies. See background here.
German actor Filipp Piatov had much to share about YouTube’s actions:
When asked if the videos indeed contained controversial content justifying removal, Piatov said there was none, adding “A false fact is not reason for a deletion.” Otherwise, many video statements made by government authorities would need to be taken down as well.
YouTube “no Truth Commission”
“YouTube is not a factchecking platform, not a Truth Commission that gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong,” said Piatov. “Who is YouTube? Is it a University? Is it a panel of virologists who sit and watch all these videos and say this one, from the 100 million that got uploaded, we’re going to delete?”
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Yesterday a German court ruled against YouTube.
A group of German artists skeptical and critical of the government response to the COVID pandemic and promoting conversations around the topic, active online under the #allesaufdentisch (literally, “everything on the table”) hashtag, sued YouTube for deleting their videos – and won in court.
The two videos that got removed by the Google-owned giant consisted of interviews artists had with scientists and they did not take the censorship lying down but opted for legal action against YouTube.
The Cologne Regional Court has now found that the removals were illegal, ruling in the plaintiff’s favor with two preliminary injunctions, ordering YouTube to restore the videos.
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