Sky News Australia is banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after the Big Tech giant accused the site of violating its medical misinformation policies.
YouTube said the news site posted videos denying the existence of COVID-19 and encouraged viewers to take hydroxychloroquine.
The Sky News Australia YouTube channel has 1.85million followers. YouTube did not specify which videos were in violation of its policies but did say they were “numerous.”
“We have clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance, to prevent the spread of Covid-19 misinformation that could cause real-world harm,” a YouTube spokesperson told Guardian Australia.”
“We apply our policies equally for everyone regardless of uploader, and in accordance with these policies and our long-standing strikes system, removed videos from and issued a strike to Sky News Australia’s channel.”
“Specifically, we don’t allow content that denies the existence of Covid-19 or that encourages people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus. We do allow for videos that have sufficient countervailing context, which the violative videos did not provide.”
For its part, Sky News Australia denied that it ever posted videos that denied the existence of COVID. The site says “a review of old videos published to the channel” did not comply with YouTube’s Terms of Service.
“We support broad discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and perspectives which is vital to any democracy,” a Sky News Australia spokesperson said.
“We take our commitment to meeting editorial and community expectations seriously.”
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