r/technology • u/Regular_Eggplant_248 • Jul 21 '25
Social Media YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/21/youtube-channels-propaganda-china-russia.html2.5k
u/Common_Collection678 Jul 21 '25
A little late, don’t ya think?
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u/Lanhdanan Jul 21 '25
Ideally yeah, but better today than tomorrow
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u/mortalcoil1 Jul 22 '25
The best time to wipe out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others was 20 years ago.
The second best time is today.
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u/Nokomis34 Jul 22 '25
I was just talking with my wife how if we managed to remove all the bots from social media things would change almost immediately.
But this is what I've been talking about when I say we've been in the middle of WW3 for years, just the weapon is information (or misinformation if you will) instead of bombs. And so far the war has been pretty one sided. It's time we at least defend ourselves, much less start fighting back.
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u/SoFetchBetch Jul 22 '25
Yes! Media literacy needs to become trendy.
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u/Lazerus42 Jul 22 '25
Yes!
Medialiteracy needs to become trendy.And then hopefully media too...
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u/ScarryShawnBishh Jul 22 '25
Both of you are on the money. I don’t think people are as dumb as they make the selves out to be.
We all can obviously read so we can bully, peer pressure, and shame each other into knowing how communicate to each other.
But not literally like they did 20+ years ago more like using that as a reason to explain that it is important to them
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u/azzers214 Jul 22 '25
The problem is, as much as I hate this, not everyone is going to be smart/wise enough. That's the part with algorithms/control people need to understand. Sure you and I can figure it out. It's slow-Jim over there that's the problem.
You can do better, but you can't engineer completely resistant people.
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u/mortalcoil1 Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
Too bad the Trump administration is going in the opposite direction.
I heard all Alaskan Airlines flights were grounded today due to "IT outage," which, many people who know more about the IT community than me have said is likely code for cyber attack.
On the other hand, there is that famous quote by Einstein, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,"
I suppose it's better than nothing that humans have found a different way to wage war.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jul 22 '25
I got downvoted to hell for even mentioning it in passing.
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u/ew73 Jul 22 '25
I was just talking with my wife how if we managed to remove all the bots from social media things would change almost immediately.
Do you remember that week or so a while back when the various cybersecurity organizations in the world worked together and took down a huge Russian botnet and knocked several of the bot farms offline entirely?
Social media was awesome. People were generally calmer, nicer and tended to engage, at least, in good faith. And the day the bots came back, everything went back to shit.
Keep in mind, the current guy has gutted many of the federal organizations that specialized in defending against these sorts of attacks.
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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Jul 22 '25
Russians have killed more Americans in Cold War 2 than Americans killed Japanese people with nukes.
Russian misinformation and infiltration of the GOP is a HUGE part of why covid went as poorly as it did. From anti-vax propaganda to getting the rotted orange elected.
That's just covid. The people that are going to die from USAID and medicare cuts are also at the feet of Russia. The Reds would not have gotten power in America if they were not backed by the Reds in Russia.
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u/The_Barbelo Jul 22 '25
I am still waiting for that “animal cruelty” report button category…. But I’ll take this as a small step in the right direction.
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u/GamerOC Jul 22 '25
I don’t think there were many YT propaganda channels when the site was first created.
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u/justfortrees Jul 21 '25
Would be curious to know the combined subscriber and view counts for all the channels taken down.
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u/Gon-no-suke Jul 21 '25
The Japanese election finished two days ago. Youtube-fuelled right-wing party went from one to 14 seats...
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u/ChodeCookies Jul 21 '25
What’s the worst that could happen?
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u/BCMakoto Jul 22 '25
Since Japan, Germany and Italy are all three having somewhat important right wing nutters again? Better not ask...
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u/Capital_Doubt7473 Jul 22 '25
If youre an archduke or poland.... Try not to get shot.
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u/ghoonrhed Jul 22 '25
How the hell does Japan even manage to spin up an anti-immigration party? It's not like they're a pro-immigration country.
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u/Gon-no-suke Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
It's a multipronged approach, based on conflating social issues concerning the following groups:
- Obnoxious tourists
- Non-residents buying up property
- A group of about 2000 Kurds, some of which have a unclear status of residence, who due to being concentrated into one area draw attention to themselves
- Japanese citizens with foreign heritage historically discriminated against (mostly Chinese and Koreans)
These groups have being "non-Japanese" in common. So although the party in question is anti-immigration, it's probably more correct to classify them as being "anti-foreigner", aka xenophobic.
Their tag line during this election was "Japanese first!".
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u/Temp_dreaming Jul 22 '25
Which is ironic because the Ainu were there first, but of course the Japan first party doesn't care about them
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u/Linkums Jul 22 '25
If you read the article, you'd know that they have been doing this already and that this is just this quarter's numbers.
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u/MikeSouthPaw Jul 22 '25
Tim Pool is still up so did it really matter? "Alternative media" is a grift by and large.
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u/yumyumtree_throwaway Jul 22 '25
You gotta hand it to Google though, they’re the only ones with the balls to actually try to fight against the hostile disinformation campaign. I have yet to see the same from Meta, X, Tiktok, even Reddit is infested with propaganda bots.
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u/KnockturnalNOR Jul 22 '25
iirc Twitter used to ban millions of Chinese and Russian bots every day before being bought up. I suppose X still deals with them but not nearly to the same degree
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u/20_mile Jul 22 '25
even Reddit is infested with propaganda bots.
Smithers. You. Are. Quite good. At. Turning. Me. On.
I see them all the time in /AskMen (elsewhere, too, like /relationships, /dating, etc). Accounts that are 3-6 years old, have been dormant until recently, have post and comment karma in the mid-100s, asking clickbaity questions, and never reply to any comments in the thread.
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u/1900grs Jul 22 '25
I see them all the time in /r/politics. For some reason, you're not allowed to say anything about it.
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u/Polyman71 Jul 21 '25
Now delete all the AI slop.
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u/Sparky_321 Jul 21 '25
They’re supposedly going to stop monetizing it
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u/1xliquidx1_ Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
Nope, AI slop can still be monetized. The new rule just means posting the exact same video over and over again won't get you any money.
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u/JudiciousSasquatch Jul 22 '25
Wow! That’ll stop ‘em! Great job, Google!
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u/drake_warrior Jul 22 '25
Platforms like TikTok will monetize the AI slop even if YouTube doesn't, the real issue is the people who watch it and produce it. There should be zero demand for it.
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u/BlueGolfball Jul 22 '25
They’re supposedly going to stop monetizing it
I have so many "history" YouTube channels blocked because they all use AI to make up fake history stories. It was wild when I caught on to what I was watching.
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u/redpandaeater Jul 22 '25
Also all the animal abuse channels that torture an animal just so they can then film a video pretending to save it from a cruel fate.
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u/Hyperious3 Jul 22 '25
They literally run the tool that people use to make AI slop
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u/carsonthecarsinogen Jul 22 '25
Could they tho?
I’m not even slightly well read on video files or YouTube’s upload process, but how would they “know”.
Obviously there’s telling signs of AI, we all know the “look”. But that’s only bad AI videos, how would YouTube know about the good AI videos?
AI can’t even tell what AI is, unfortunately I think AI content moderation will just lead to actual creators being punished and accused of using AI.
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u/MoneyTalks45 Jul 21 '25
Seemed to have missed Fox News, Newsmax, Oann, etc. it’s okay though. Maybe next round in 2048.
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u/Ikea_desklamp Jul 22 '25
Only foreign propaganda, duh. Domestic propaganda (which Google undoubtedly has a hand in funding) is a ok!
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u/lurkinglurkerwholurk Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
Don’t forget propaganda supportive of
localAmerican interests. Gotta leave viewpoints aligned withpopulargovernment-decided nationalist sediments alone!(edit: Heh, just checked. China Observer, the one run by the Fa Lu Gong cult is still up and running)
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u/sparky8251 Jul 22 '25
Yeah... Fa Lu Gong is all it takes to show this isnt about really combating "propaganda", its war consent manufacturing. We want to intervene in the russia ukraine stuff for money, so need to cut off opinions against it for profits to go up. We want war with China too, so... Same there. Same for Iran... War, war war. Thats all this is about, making people VERY comfortable with tons of war.
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u/Kastar_Troy Jul 22 '25
This . Obviously under direction of Trump, they're trying to bury more of the truth.
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u/Creative_Cotton Jul 22 '25
You misunderstand. The channels were not wiped because of their content or affiliation, but because they didn't pay protection.
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u/scr0tal Jul 21 '25
Google announced Monday the removal of nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter.
The takedown included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China.
These campaigns primarily shared content in Chinese and English that promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on U.S. foreign affairs.
Over 2,000 removed channels were linked to Russia. The content was in multiple languages that supported Russia and criticized Ukraine, NATO and the West.
Google, in May, removed 20 YouTube channels, 4 Ads accounts, and 1 Blogger blog linked to RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet accused of paying prominent conservative influencers for social media content ahead of the 2024 election.
Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — all staunch supporters of President Donald Trump — made content for Tenent Media, the Tennessee company described in the indictment, according to NBC News.
YouTube began blocking RT channels in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The active removal of accounts is part of the Google Threat Analysis Group’s work to counter global disinformation campaigns and “coordinated influence” operations.
Google’s second quarter report also outlined the removal of influence campaigns linked to Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Romania and Ghana that were found to be targeting political rivals.
Some campaigns centered on growing geopolitical conflicts, including narratives on both sides of the Israel-Palestine War.
YouTube declined to provide further comment on the removal.
Google took down more than 23,000 accounts in the first quarter.
Meta announced last week it removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”
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u/awesomemc1 Jul 21 '25
Didn’t know that more than 7,700 YouTube channels are linked to China. Spamouflage sure is working on YouTube but still..damn that much?!
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u/Infinite_Lemon_8236 Jul 22 '25
Spamouflage? 7,700 channels out of the ~2.70 billion google has available worldwide is practically nothing. Not even a fraction of the drop going into the bucket, more like a singular water molecule going along for the ride.
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u/Smith6612 Jul 22 '25
I wonder how much storage Google freed up by removing these poopaganda accounts.
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u/BigEdsHairMayo Jul 22 '25
Probably not much. Every account is technically a channel, even if there's nothing uploaded. If you've ever clicked into one of the obvious propaganda accounts, it's usually just a few playlists and nothing else.
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u/mayorofdumb Jul 22 '25
The funnier part is if they were getting paid for their propaganda. With technology they can a million YouTube channels and make them all have 10 billion views. This is them trying to find the limits and probably learning from whatever the CIA did to them.
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u/uzu_afk Jul 22 '25
I think it’s A LOT more. On top of that take all the ‘influencers’ who get ‘campaigns’ and only have to record themselves saying something perhaps not even contentious in immediate nature, that is directly linked to state actor platforms like radicalizing and dividing people and pushing anti democratic foreign state controlled and paid ‘alternative parties’ towards power.
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u/red-cloud Jul 22 '25
See how free we are? We don’t have government censorship in the USA because our corporate overlords do it voluntarily!!
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u/sw00pr Jul 22 '25
I would like the ability to verify that these channels are bad. And see what other evidence YT has against them. Frankly, I don't trust any The Man to tell me what is and isn't safe to watch. Transparency is all I ask.
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u/TheHumanite Jul 22 '25
Seems like they're just saying that since they were pro China or pro Russia, they were bad which, boy am I glad to be so free. Not like those censored and propagandized Russians and Chinese folks!
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u/cbih Jul 22 '25
If YouTube wiped out 99% of it's channels, I probably wouldn't even notice.
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u/BowsersMuskyBallsack Jul 22 '25
Indeed. I am subscribed to 15 channels in total. All of them content creators that do not rely on shock editing, AI slop, or false advertising. If all of the low effort BS on YouTube disappeared this moment, I would not notice at all because I don't watch it in the first place.
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u/Rhythmalist Jul 21 '25
Cool.
Now do the American made propaganda.
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u/Additional-Hour6038 Jul 21 '25
Fascism and racism is allowed as long as it's dressed up as American "Patriotism".
Don't be evil.
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u/Rhythmalist Jul 21 '25
Unfortunately, Google abandoned that tenet a long time ago.
Now they are as evil and profit dictates.
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u/tommos Jul 22 '25
I bet all those US funded Falun Gong channels are still up.
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u/adacmswtf1 Jul 22 '25
*soyface* China will collapse within 30 days!!
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u/surahee Jul 22 '25
Hey, I read that on The Economist - how a railway bridge fell and it is fomenting revolution - any day now!
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u/giulianosse Jul 22 '25
Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe as well. You know, both radios stations turned media channels who are openly considered to "have been the CIA's two largest and most successful covert action projects" by literally [CIA themselves](.https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000238882.pdf).
But don't worry everyone the US government totally stopped funding them after the cold war ended. Pinky promise.
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u/Lawrencedingdog Jul 22 '25
Laowhy86, serpentza, advchina, chinauncensored. I can go on and on. Still up
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u/Psychological_Ad_539 Jul 22 '25
Ah yes, the racist channels that use the overrated phrase ‘hate the government but not the people’.
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u/cookingboy Jul 22 '25
Or worse, and repeated by many on this site: "It's ok to hate on the Chinese because being Chinese isn't a race, so it's not racist".
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u/Largewhitebutt Jul 22 '25
Great! Now stop trying to brain wash me with 2 hour right wing pragerU ad’s when I fall asleep because you know I wont be awake to skip them! Ive blocked every single one I’ve seen and Im still getting random weird “800” subscriber channel ads focused on “history” and “preserving american freedoms.” I fell asleep watching Minecraft lets plays dawg.
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u/Dull_Bid6002 Jul 22 '25
All the right wing ads are so ubiquitous because they target broadly. If you go into the why you're getting them, it'll always be a lie about what the targeted ad is for.
I don't just block, I report them as misleading because of that. I rarely get one now.
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u/Kerberos1566 Jul 22 '25
How about getting rid of the Russian propaganda served up as ads, like PragerU?
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u/shawnkfox Jul 21 '25
Someone needs to let them know that they missed Lex Fridman
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u/snakesayan Jul 21 '25
It’s only propaganda when other countries do it but not the United States 🙄
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u/adacmswtf1 Jul 22 '25
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
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u/Paperdiego Jul 21 '25
please block the maga right wing propaganda ones as well
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 Jul 22 '25
Well, they did eliminate thousands of Russian channels.
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u/4wordSOUL Jul 22 '25
Only after they monetized an obscene amount of ad revenue off of it.
I'd be moved if they donated all of the revenue to struggling families in the poorest zip codes across the nation. Otherwise, this is all a performative game. They arbitrage the situation on both sides, making profits from the ad revenue until there is enough public outcry they can claim some moral/ethical/patriotic false valor in cutting off mountains of propganda they thorougly profitted off of.
'Don't be evil' my ass.
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u/lordraiden007 Jul 22 '25
Were pragerU and Charlie Kirk hit? Can I please stop getting their shitty ads? Please?
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u/Geluganshp Jul 22 '25
meanwhile I got my dose of israelian propaganda directly in my google result
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u/hopopo Jul 22 '25
I wonder how many Israeli propaganda channels did they delete?
As far as I can tell, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and all other mayor networks in US and Europe are still operating.
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u/MexGrow Jul 22 '25
Haha exactly. They will never admit there's American/Pro-Israel propaganda.
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u/AntonioBarbarian Jul 22 '25
So when are US and Israeli-linked propaganda channels getting deleted? Or is it only propaganda if it comes from the "bad guys"?
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u/thefanciestcat Jul 22 '25
Any examples?
I think this is a good thing, but I would be curious to know what kind of content it was and what kind of follower counts they had cultivated.
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u/Former-Whole8292 Jul 22 '25
Part of my issue with the Biden admin is they ran the country like their win meant business back to usual. We have a brainwashed, cultified country and they needed to aggressively work on this at all fronts. Passing bills to make American lives better wasnt going to work. BC repubs either take credit or convince them theyre bad or that Trump did them.
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u/MissLeaP Jul 22 '25
When will they wipe out all those right-wing propaganda channels, though? I'm far more worried about those channels that casually promote hateful content because it works well with their shitty algorithm than china or russia propaganda channels
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u/mdavis360 Jul 22 '25
The fact that Google essentially pays for these crackpots lifestyles by monetization is sickening. Google is basically responsible for all of this. They should never fund this shit.
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u/Secondchance002 Jul 22 '25
Rogan, the pedonald defender needs to be wiped first.
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u/MichaelMeier112 Jul 22 '25
They did remove a few thousands of Russian linked account so many of those are gone
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u/eju2000 Jul 21 '25
The AI slop grows by the second. If they don’t even pretend to try to delete this as well they will lose me a viewer & customer forever
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u/Verum_Orbis Jul 22 '25
Jubilee and Youtube platformed literal self proclaimed and proudly asserted Nazis, White Supremacists, and Christian Theocratic fascists today; giving them a larger audience and potential revenue increase to spew their vile hateful ideology. Somehow that was allowed on Youtube in 2025 but you'll be censored if you criticize the Israeli government and military for slaughtering tens of thousands of unarmed children. What an insane world. Religion is a mind virus.
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u/NukeouT Jul 22 '25
Could they have bothered to do this before the election so we wouldn't have re-elected the manchurian candidate?
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u/santz007 Jul 22 '25
YT, tiktok, FB, and X are the reason we are in this hot mess of disinformation campaigns during election cycles which has led us to this insane timeline
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u/Kolumbus39 Jul 22 '25
Great, now clean off all the shitty Elsagate channels and crack down on the borderline porno ads
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u/AlexP222 Jul 22 '25
Wipes out foreign propaganda yet keeps western propaganda in place. Just like YouTube auto deletes my comments when I call out the genocide. Fuck Google.
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u/axejeff Jul 22 '25
So they are packaging censorship as protection from propaganda? Why doesn’t it then also remove American propaganda? Oh wait we don’t have such things right
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u/peacefullofi Jul 22 '25
American propaganda is fine tho. ICE good, Israel not doing genocide, no human rights abuses 👍👍👍🇺🇲🏴🇨🇦🇩🇪🇫🇷☮️🔫
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u/syylvo Jul 22 '25
Wonder if they also shut down those linked to western propaganda. Basically all official media
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u/Azznorfinal Jul 22 '25
Great job Google, right on time after you got the fuckwit you wanted elected to fuck the poor over.
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u/el_f3n1x187 Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
can they do away with clearly deceptive advertising? like the one promoting the purchase of stocks of PEMEX, mexico's state oil company........which they don't sell....
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u/ACartonOfHate Jul 22 '25
Should have done that before the election last year. And for that matter, since 2016.
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u/andrewskdr Jul 21 '25
So Tim pool surely got deleted right?