Sat 24 August 2019:
On Thursday, YouTube, a Google-owned video sharing platform, disabled 210 channels on the platform after discovering that the channels “behaved in a coordinated manner while uploading videos related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong,” according to a blog post by Shane Huntley, a member of Google’s security team. There was no indication about the popularity of the channels or their activity.
This comes just days after Facebook and Twitter shut down hundreds of accounts with ties to China. While Google did not state whether or not it suspected that the Chinese government was behind these channels, Twitter and Facebook were clearer about their suspicions.
The US-based social media companies’ actions could put further strain on US-China relations, as the two countries have been in a trade war for over a year. Most recently, the US sanctioned Huawei Technologies, a Chines telecommunications company.
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