Sunday, February 02, 2014

PM Abbott's 'Promises Delivered' Video Banned By YouTube For "Deceptive Content", His Channel Suspended

By Darryl Mason

In the world of Social Media Fails, and in politics there has been plenty, it's pretty hard to top this.

Here's what happened.

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, posts a video to YouTube boasting of how "we've delivered on our promises" and spends a lot of the time pretty much calm-ranting about "illegal" asylum seekers.

YouTube decides the video is "deceptive content" and blocks anyone from viewing it. For hours, the boast about 'promises delivered' and YouTube's denial sits there on the linked video right on PM Abbott's Twitter feed, while the below image is tweeted and Facebooked across the planet, to much amusement and mockery.

Is YouTube calling PM Abbott a liar for claiming he's delivered on his promises, or did they can the vid because in the vid he called aslyum seekers "illegals" when international law decrees they are most certainly not?

This screengrab originally posted on Twitter by @Mumbrella
The above tweet is then deleted from PM Tony Abbott's Twitter feed. Meanwhile, YouTube suspends Tony Abbott's entire YouTube channel.

Screengrab via Reddit

That's right. The Australian prime minister has had his YouTube channel removed, after a review by YouTube.

And it's not like YouTube does such things on a whim, anymore. They're very clear in guidelines about why they would take such drastic action:
"When a video gets flagged as inappropriate, we review the video to determine whether it violates our Terms of Use—flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the system. If we remove your video after reviewing it, you can assume that we removed it purposefully, and you should take our warning notification seriously."

Someone, or presumably more than one person, at YouTube looked at Tony Abbott's 'Achievements' video, decided it was "deceptive" and made a decision to have it removed and the prime minister's account suspended.

Remarkable.

Keep up the "good work", Tony.


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