The government has once again exercised its rights under IT Rules 202, to ban 45 YouTube videos from 10 different channels that claimed to be featuring mis informational content regarding national security, foreign relations and more baseless claims.
Government Bans 45 YouTube Videos Of 10 Channels
“Orders to block the concerned videos were issued on 23.09.2022 under the provisions of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. The blocked videos had a cumulative viewership of over 1 crore 30 lakh views”, reads the statement from the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.
The Ministry also confirmed that these channels were morphing the videos and including the fake news contents with an intent to spread hate among different religious communities.
“Examples include false claims such as the Government has taken away the religious rights of certain communities, violent threats against religious communities, declaration of civil war in India, etc. Such videos were found to have the potential to cause communal disharmony and disrupt public order in the country,” further added.
Issues such as the “Agnipath scheme, Indian Armed Forces, India’s national security apparatus, Kashmir ” and more were being discussed in these videos based on misleading information.
“The content was observed to be false and sensitive from the perspective of national security and India’s friendly relations with foreign states”, said the ministry.
“Certain videos depicted the erroneous external boundary of India with parts of J&K and Ladakh outside the Indian territory. The such cartographic misrepresentation was found to be detrimental to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India”, reads the issued statement.
“The content blocked by the Ministry was found to be detrimental to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, India’s friendly relations with foreign States, and public order in the country. Accordingly, the content was covered within the ambit of section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000,” it further notes.
One Of The Blocked Videos From Dhruv Rathi’s Channel
Dhruv Rathi is a popular Indian YouTuber who has been accused of spreading misinformation and propaganda through his critical content.
One of the videos of him was blacklisted by the Government. The noticeable news is that after all the videos were blocked by YouTube, Rathi’s video remained for several hours even after the Government informed about the ban via press release.
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Akhilesh Sharma, NDTV Journalist, tweeted to inform us that one of the videos from Dhruv Rathi’s channel is also blocked but several users commented to him that his video was still online. As the people reported and pointed out this matter YouTube finally blocked the content in the country.
