YouTube deletes 2 channels of RT’s sister project RT DE with 600K subscribers over alleged community guidelines violation

https://www.rt.com/news/536068-rt-de-youtube-channel-deleted/

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YouTube has permanently deleted both of RT’s German-language channels, the news outlet has announced. RT DE was listed among top News & Politics channels on the social media platform, with hundreds of millions of views.

The Google-owned video service “has deleted the RT DE channel, as well as our second channel DFP [Der Fehlende Part, “the missing piece”], without the right to restoration,” Dinara Toktosunova, head of RT in Germany, announced on her Telegram channel on Tuesday.

The main RT DE channel was barred from live-streaming for seven days since September 21, on the basis of a strike over “community guidelines” violations, for alleged “medical misinformation” in four videos. YouTube did not elaborate on what specifically was questionable in the clips.

The strikes were due to expire on Tuesday, but YouTube removed the channel without explanation instead. The same thing happened with DFP, which had no strikes and posted RT DE content. However, as of now, YouTube did not cite the streaming on DFP as the reason for taking down both channels. 

RT DE was among the top four German-language channels in YouTube’s News and Politics category, based on Tubular Labs data, with over 600,000 subscribers and almost 547 million total views.

In recent months, RT DE has faced mounting pressure in Germany, including over its plans to launch a TV station later this year. In mid-August, Luxembourg denied RT’s application for a German-language broadcast license. Chancellor Angela Merkel denied pressuring the neighbouring country to do so, despite multiple German outlets reporting that representatives from Berlin met with Luxembourg officials to discuss the TV license issue.

Ahead of the planned launch, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that multiple German media outlets had waged “an outright information war” against RT in Germany. The same month, Die Welt – owned by the Axel Springer conglomerate – published two opinion pieces that German courts later found contained false claims about RT DE.

Earlier this year, Commerzbank abruptly and without explanation announced that it was shutting down accounts associated with RT DE. When the outlet reached out to other German banks, its inquiries about doing business were ignored or rejected.

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