Eurasianet makes progress with YouTube, scores small victory against authoritarian censor, 21 October 2021

YouTube this week began identifying all videos posted by Turkmenistan’s state broadcaster with a disclaimer: “Watan Habarlary is funded in whole or in part by the Turkmenistani government.”

The change appeared amid Eurasianet’s efforts to restore its YouTube-hosted video content, which the company had taken down last month at the request of Turkmenistan – a totalitarian government that blocks YouTube within its own borders...

Within 40 hours of sending its first automated message, YouTube disabled our account, taking offline several dozen videos, most of which have nothing to do with Turkmenistan.

With YouTube not responding to our attempts to contest the claims, and our entire video library inaccessible, last week we began protesting on social media and wrote about the faceless arbiters’ actions in our newsletter. Within three days, we received automated messages from YouTube telling us that it had rejected two of Watan Habarlary’s copyright claims pending a request for more information. That provisionally restored the videos and unlocked our account.

Afterwards, Eurasianet queried YouTube about its policy for identifying authoritarian state media...