What really happened during the Christmas Crypto-YouTube Purge?

A lot of theories left and right when hundreds of cryptocurrency education videos were erroneously banned from YouTube. Crypto videos don’t make Youtube enough money, Google wants to break into the finance space and eliminate competition, etc.

But what really happened? Read the full article here.

Shortly:

1. the algorithm has just messed something up. It's not the first time, and it will definitely not be the last time. Look what already happened in the past with rap music, robot fighting, racial equality,...

2. The majority of the banned crypto videos appear to have been targeted for allegedly promoting “harmful and dangerous” content as well as the “sale of regulated goods.”

Vape YouTuber Matt Culley said that he believed the clampdowns were even more related than just their error messages. According to Culley, in 2018, YouTube tightened up on the sharing of external links in video descriptions. Videos were removed if their descriptions contained links selling regulated goods, such as nicotine, online gambling, counterfeit documents or currency, and more.

Based on these standards, Culley said many vape and cannabis channels were hit hard with takedowns since many had links to these products in their descriptions. And he suspects that if YouTube tweaked its algorithm around Christmas time (which it likely did, considering the purge), it could have erroneously labeled crypto links as associated with online gambling, a prominent use of crypto, or counterfeit currency.

In conclusion, I fully agree with the last sentence of the article:

If they wanted to ban crypto, they would’ve just done it.

Yet again some nice research work from Brenna Smith. All credits go to her and Cryptosint.