Censorship

At 1 AM on April 4, 2024, Haseen Rehmani, the founder of Bolta Hindustan—a Hindi news YouTube channel, received an email from YouTube, stating that their channel had been blocked due to a notice received from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB).  The notice was “issued under Rule 15(2) of the IT Rules, 2021, read with sec 69A of the IT Act, 2000” and had been kept confidential, meaning that Rehmani had no idea why his channel had been blocked.

In response to a query about the channel’s removal, YouTube sent us the following statement: “We have clear policies for removal requests from governments around the world. We review government removal requests when notified through the correct legal processes, and also review content for violations of our Community Guidelines. And, where appropriate, we restrict or remove content in keeping with local laws and our Terms of Service after a thorough review. All of these requests are tracked and included in our Transparency Report.”