YouTube Targets Chinese Blogger After She Posts Video On Coronavirus Origins

YouTube demonetized the account of popular Chinese-American blogger Jennifer Zeng Thursday night, after she published a video which considers several possibilities for the origins of COVID-19, according to Forbes.

What? “We’ve determined that your channel is no longer eligible for monetization” ! What should I do?
油管刚刚通知我说，取消我频道的广告资格！我该怎么办？ pic.twitter.com/X31GouFRhA

— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) May 8, 2020

The New York-based Zeng, who grew up in China and spent time as a prisoner in a CCP labor camp, has picked up a following on YouTube and Twitter after posting some of the most insightful, unfiltered footage of what’s been going on inside China and elsewhere during the coronavirus outbreak.

“I’ve been warned before by YouTube and have always appealed,” she said, adding “I’ve been warned by them on maybe 95% of my coronavirus videos. I just got this note last night and I wrote to them about it this morning.”

In the video, which has not been censored and is still available, Zeng reviews a story published on a Falun Gong website called Minghui. The authors used pen names, without usual surnames, suggesting they are writing from inside China. The paper is one of the enemies of the Chinese Communist Party, which likens the Falun Gong to an insurgency.

The video goes through a list of seven of the origination theories circulating among official circles and not Western conspiracies about it being a bioweapon manufactured by China.

However, it does note that weaponization was one of the origin stories the Chinese government used early on to deflect blame towards Washington. That origin story was put out by a Chinese military website and spread via social media, making headlines here at home. The article was taken down later. It does not seem to be part of the official China narrative anymore. –Forbes

It appears that Censorship over coronavirus reporting has only gotten worse in recent months, with this site having been banned by Twitter for reporting on a Wuhan scientist currently at the center of an international investigation by the ‘five eyes’ spy agencies, while YouTube has banned divergent opinions from the platform.

Last week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN‘s “Reliable Sources” that any content which goes against World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for dealing with the coronavirus would be dealt with.

“Anything that goes against W.H.O will be removed from YouTube”

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki

pic.twitter.com/1TxwdBMq17

— LΞIGH (@LeighStewy) April 21, 2020

“Anything that is medically unsubstantiated, so people saying ‘Take Vitamin C or take turmeric, those cure you,’ those are examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy,” she said.

So – if one made a video telling people not to wear face masks, like the WHO did, or that coronavirus is not transmissible between humans, like the WHO claimed, or any of the other positions the WHO has flip-flopped on, how would YouTube ‘deal with’ it?

What makes Zeng’s case particularly notable is that the Wuhan lab leak theory has become mainstream – even if it’s not the view endorsed by the China-friendly WHO.

That the virus was not man-made but escaped a lab is shared not only by the Five Eyes intelligence collaborative of the U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia, but also by some Democrats.

“I don’t think it was spliced and diced in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” says Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council and a former senior official for both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden when he was a Senator. “But I do believe it escaped a lab, accidentally.”

Metzl’s view of the lab escape makes it more difficult to sum this up as merely anti-China, or pro-Trump sentiment. Metzl is not anti-China. –Forbes

And according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “There is enormous evidence that this is where it began,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

So – when it comes to the roundtable of discussion, YouTube will only allow those who agree with one side – stifling debate while protecting China.

Read the rest of the report here.