Censorship of YouTube

Video-sharing platform YouTube is the second-most popular website as of 2016, according to Alexa Internet.Censorship of it has occurred and continues to occur in many countries throughout the world, though the website can typically still be accessed through VPN or proxy servers.

YouTube blocking occurs for a variety of reasons including:

In some countries YouTube is completely blocked, either through a long term standing ban or for more limited periods of time such as during periods of unrest, the run-up to an election, or in response to upcoming political anniversaries. In other countries access to the website as a whole remains open, but access to specific videos is blocked. In cases where the entire site is banned due to one particular video, YouTube will often agree to remove or limit access to that video in order to restore service.

As of September 2012, countries with standing national bans on YouTube include China, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, and Turkmenistan. YouTube was also mostly blocked in Germany from YouTube's side due to disputes between GEMA and YouTube over royalties until they made peace in 2016.

YouTube's Terms of Service prohibit the posting of videos which violate copyrights or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech. User-posted videos that violate such terms may be removed and replaced with a message stating: "This video is no longer available because its content violated YouTube's Terms of Service".

YouTube offers an opt-in feature known as "Restricted Mode", which filters videos that may contain mature content.

YouTube policies restrict certain forms of content from being included in videos being monetized with advertising, including strong violence, language, sexual content, and "controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown", unless the content is "usually newsworthy or comedic and the creator's intent is to inform or entertain".

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Wikipedia