About Our Remarkable Ban and Return to YouTube

In an odd turn of events, we are pleased to announce we are back on YouTube after our channel was taken down. Unlike many other channels like our friends at Marihuana TV, which still remain banned.

Over the past couple of months, YouTube channels related to cannabis started to being shut down. The only message they received: ‘The channel’s content had been flagged for review and was found to violate YouTube’s guidelines.’

At first, we thought we were safe from the ‘purge‘ as some like to call it. But then out of the blue on April 25, we too were taken down.

You can add us to the list of censored cannabis @YouTube channels now too @leafly #censorship https://t.co/QzmBbak0v7

— Cannabis News Net (@cannabisnewsnet) 25 april 2018

We complained to YouTube, with only one opportunity to defend yourself. This did nothing however and after reaching out to Villamedia (A website about Journalism), Motherboard VICE and another Dutch news outlet (RTV Noord).

The journalist at RTV Noord then got a message from a Google employee, saying:

Yesterday I read your article about Steven Kompier on the website of RTV Noord, after which I suspected that a mistake was made at YouTube. The YouTube team has now recovered Stevens channel.

Our official statement: “We count on our community members to know our Community Guidelines and we do not know what to do” flagged content quickly, and if we find that we do violate the guidelines, we remove it. A flagged by users or identified by our team is mistakenly tasks down.When this is brought to our attention, we review the content and take appropriate action, including restoring videos or channels that had been removed. “

It’s true, and we’re really got restored on YouTube without any content lost on May 4.

We are back on @YouTube Thanks!

— Cannabis News Net (@cannabisnewsnet) 4 mei 2018

Meanwhile all this happened, we were already moving everything to our new Vimeo account. In the future, we will continue to publish on both platforms.

Many of our colleagues and friends still find themselves without a voice. As such, we urge you to sign this petition.

The report by Marihuana TV on the censorship: