The NewsGuard organization reveals, in a report made public on Wednesday, that it has identified more than 250 cases where RT documentaries about the war in Ukraine have been broadcast on YouTube, despite a blocking of RT channels on the video platform.
They spread a whole series of false information which is at the heart of Russian propaganda. The idea that “Nazism” is present in politics as well as in society in Ukraine, the accusation of “genocide” against Russian-speaking populations in the Donbass, the Maidan revolution in 2014 which would be “a coup backed by the West”… These films, documentaries from the Russian channel RT, should in principle not appear on YouTube. In March 2022, the hosting site announced that it was blocking media funded by the Russian authorities, and thus RT channels. But despite this ban, the NewsGuard organization reveals, in a report published on Wednesday February 22, to have identified more than 250 cases where RT documentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine were broadcast. on the platform.
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According to the organization, which assesses the level of reliability and transparency of news sites and media, these documentaries have been relayed on more than 100 YouTube channels, for a total of more than half a million views. A majority of these videos – around 200 out of 250 – still featured the logo of RT’s documentary arm, RTD, but around 50 of them did not show their connection to RT“probably to avoid detection by YouTube”advances NewsGuard.
“NewsGuard analysis shows that despite YouTube banning Russian state media, this propaganda has found a way to thrive.”
NewsGuardin its report of February 22, 2023
In its report, NewsGuard recalls that RTD has produced, since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 50 videos spreading false information about the war. These films are visible on YouTube in Russian and English, but also sometimes in French and Spanish, specifies the organization.
Dozens of monetized videos
The NewsGuard report focuses in particular on the example of the YouTube channel iEarlGrey, run by a Briton, Mike Jones, residing in Russia, in Saint Petersburg. It broadcasts RT documentaries in English. Shortly after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, this channel switched from broadcasting topics related to online video games to content containing Russian propaganda. With his channel, Mike Jones, for example, takes up the language of Moscow on the strike that hit the Mariupol maternity hospital in March 2022. A widely documented bombing, but which the iEarlGrey channel presents, like the Kremlin, as a “staging”.
Not only this video “infringed there policy of YouTube which prohibits content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events”, but it also allows Mike Jones to obtain advertising revenue, reveals NewsGuard. Several dozen pieces of propaganda broadcast by the channel showed, during the organization’s investigation, “Google-enabled programmatic ads from well-known brands” or non-profit organizations.
With this chain, “Russian propaganda films have garnered tens of thousands of views on YouTube”warns NewsGuard. An RT documentary broadcast by Mike Jones in November has no less than 50,000 views.
Many small channels with “powerful collective impact”
In parallel with these well-followed accounts, NewsGuard alerts on the“collective impact (…) powerful” smaller YouTube channels with pro-Russian fake news. The organization has identified more than 80 channels “anonymous disseminating pro-Russian war propaganda”. “With small subscriber bases and low views per video, these channels seem to be able to avoid YouTube moderation, despite uploading many clips of RT every day.” analyzes the report. NewsGuard takes the example of an RT movie, Donbass: I’m alive!broadcast by about 40 anonymous channels on YouTube and “affecting a total of tens of thousands of spectators”. “If they seem insignificant individually, their collective impact is powerful”, continues NewsGuard.
The organization also spotted RT content on “at least five channels” obviously managed by the Russian authorities.
YouTube removes dozens of content
Contacted by NewsGuard to comment on the report’s findings, YouTube “did not question these observations”. “We’ve removed over 9,000 channels and over 85,000 war-related videos for violating our Community Guidelines,” defends the American giant. Additionally, we have blocked YouTube channels associated with Russian state-funded news channels worldwide, leading to the blocking of over 800 channels and over 4 million videos.” On Tuesday, February 21, the platform had removed 81 videos among the 250 propaganda content identified by NewsGuard.
The platform, however, did not respond to NewsGuard about the monetized videos on the iEarlGrey channel, nor about the monitoring of small anonymous channels broadcasting these propaganda videos. As for chains “sponsored by the Russian state”, NewsGuard “found that YouTube had indeed removed uploads of RT documentaries from these channels. But the platform had not suspended the channels themselves.”