Marcin Rola’s wRealu24 TV channel on YouTube has received a one week suspension. He nor the team are able to upload any videos to the channel because, according to YouTube, they violated their “hate speech” policy. The block came after the channel had published videos defending Catholicism, Western values, and traditionalism. The channel is also highly critical of cultural movements like those in the LGBTQIA+ or the topic of migration.
Polish nationalist Paul Moczar spread the word about the block to English speakers via a tweet on December 8th, 2019.
Polish youtube news channel, wrealu24, has been banned from posting new videos. https://t.co/UBQhF2XwfD pic.twitter.com/ZQViadWeBC
— Paul Moczar (@awslist) December 8, 2019
He links to a tweet from Jerzy Kwaśniewski, the president and lawyer of Instytut Ordo Iuris, a pro-freedom law firm, who called out YouTube for its biased censorship policies while linking to an interview that Rola had discussing the issues.
Speaking with DoRzeczy, a Polish news sites, Rola explained that this isn’t the first time they’ve been blocked by YouTube from uploading content, but he stresses that the reasons for the blocks has nothing to do with Polish civil law, saying…
“We have been blocked under the pretext of hate speech – which is absurd, because there is no such term in Polish law. There is libel or defamation, but it is the Polish court that decides whether it took place. YouTube does not do anything about it, however, gave us this warning and a one-week blockade. In fact, the channel can be closed at any moment, and there are nearly 290,000 followers there, together with our website we have 330,000 real users. This is the largest video platform of this type – conservative, independent. Our viewers and donors finance us primarily. We also disabled ads a month ago. What’s more, they didn’t necessarily pay us for the ads that have already been shown.”
Another salient point that Rola brings up is that YouTube demonetized wRealu24 TV’s ad revenue but they still run ads on the channel. Thus, Rola estimates that YouTube has generated over zł42,000, which is the equivalent of nearly $11,000 USD.
However, as we’ve pointed out many times before, when YouTube demonetizes channels they still run ads on them, but the channel owners don’t see a dime.
Rola and his team aren’t standing by idly, though. They will fight back.
Rola retained the services of Ordo Iuris, who will represent them in court to recover the $11,000 and to fight against YouTube’s censorship against Conservatives.
Whether or not that’s going to work is a complete shot in the dark, and so far YouTube has looked impenetrable in the courtroom save for when the Federal Trade Commission came down on them and enforced the COPPA standards, which will go into effect soon.
It’s also interesting because Germany has setup a firm to also fight against YouTube’s draconian measures called the FairTube campaign. This is a collaboration between German firm IG Metall and various YouTubers who have collectively joined a YouTube Union.
They, too, also plan to take YouTube to court over the very same issues that wRealu24 TV is facing.
The channel is so far still alive, boasting more than 282,000 subscribers. As of the writing of this article the last video that was uploaded was back on December 4th, 2019. They’ll likely get back to posting content when the one week suspension is up, assuming they survive the rumored purge set to take place on December 10th.
(Thanks for the news tip durka durka)
