YouTube Cancels Cointelegraph’s BTC Halving Livestream for Being ‘Harmful Content’

YouTube’s censorship rabbit hole is deep, especially as it pertains to cryptocurrency topics.

Cointelegraph had a full day of programming lined up for a livestream that covered Bitcoin’s third block halving on May 11. The agenda mostly went off without a hitch — fintech luminaries like Tim Draper, Roger Ver, Meltem Demirors, and many more shared their time and opinions with Cointelegraph editorial staff over the course of a livestream that lasted just under seven hours.

But the stream was blocked and deleted six hours and 42 minutes into a nearly finished program, locking more than 2,000 viewers out of our coverage. YouTube is notorious for bans and censorship of crypto-related content, and it’s driven a number of crypto content creators to competing platforms that operate on decentralized principles.

Our experience of being canceled by YouTube is one with far more questions than answers. Because YouTube’s practices on this stuff are more opaque than transparent, we were just as surprised as the rest of our audience when the livestream cut out. The specific reason given for terminating the video feed is that our blockhalving coverage was “harmful or dangerous content” that violated YouTube’s community policy.

We’ve appealed the decision and will keep you apprised of what we learn. Thank you for your support in the meantime.