YouTube reportedly cut the cord for Christian channel Olive Tree Ministries over the holiday weekend, then reversed the decision after media inquiries.
According to YouTube guidelines, a user is allowed three strikes before an account is terminated.
Community users can report videos/channels for violating hate speech guidelines, as well as for harassment and cyberbullying. Violating community guidelines results in strikes.
“We understand that users make mistakes, and don’t intend to violate our policies. That’s why strikes don’t last forever—if you don’t receive another strike for six months, your initial strike will expire. If you receive a strike, make sure to review the reason your content was removed to learn from your mistake,” the information reads.
Olive Tree Ministries’ Jan Markell said the video-sharing site issued the third strike for her video interview with Tom Doyle about his book Killing Christians: Living the Faith Where It’s Not Safe to Believe.
However, WND says they inquired about the removal of the channel, which triggered YouTube to reinstate it.
“When it’s brought to our attention that a video or channel has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it,” a YouTube spokesperson told the outlet.
But Doyle says the channel removal is a form of persecution.
“What this really is is a war on Jesus,” he tells WND. “This is evil regimes wanting to eradicate anything about Jesus on planet Earth. There is persecution wherever people name the name of Jesus.”
This isn’t the first time Christians assumed persecution when YouTube removed channels/videos.
In early July, YouTube removed the trailer for Ray Comfort’s film Audacity.
“This is such an irony,” Comfort said at the time. “Last year YouTube sent us a trophy congratulating us for surpassing 100,000 subscribers. Yet, now, because someone didn’t like what they saw, YouTube is denying our freedom of speech and religion, and engaging in illegal viewpoint discrimination.”
But days later, the video site reinstated the trailer.
“The trailer had been removed ‘as a violation of YouTube’s policy against spam, scams and commercially deceptive content,'” Comfort said. “But since we found nothing in it that fit that description, we naturally concluded that YouTube didn’t like the content and yanked it.
“YouTube kindly explained that we had violated their metadata policy,” the filmmaker stated. “We had added a list of keywords in the video description section, not knowing that was against their company policy.”
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