YouTube Tried to Cancel or De-Platform a Legitimate Entrepreneur/Bitcoin Maximalist’s Channel
The Pomp
Anthony Pompliano or Pomp is a successful entrepreneur and investor. He has built and sold several companies and is an avid and bullish Bitcoin advocate.
Pomp was live streaming an interview on October 11, 2021, with PlanB, a former institutional investor with 25 years of experience in financial markets. PlanB also created the Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model that uses scarcity to quantify Bitcoin value. According to Pomp, PlanB was dropping bombs or imparting wisdom regarding the economy, monetary policy, stock-to-flow ratio, and Bitcoin, which PlanB thought could reach $1M to $5M in the next couple of years.
The Cancellation
The live stream abruptly ended because YouTube deleted Pomp’s channel. In confusion, Pomp checked his email and correspondence from YouTube said their team reviewed the content, and it violates their harmful and dangerous policy. YouTube also stated they have permanently removed Pomp’s channel, and he will never be able to access, possess, or create any other YouTube channel.
The Backlash
Pomp and his team had almost 270K YouTube subscribers at the time of this incident and, more importantly, more than 1M followers on Twitter. So he started tweeting YouTube’s emails. His tweets caught attention from Silicon Valley executives, senators, and congressmen who showed support for his uncalled-for censorship or de-platforming. His tweets also caused an uproar from his network and community, which started trending on Twitter.
The Restoration
Pomp’s channel eventually got restored in about 4 hours because of all the noise he created on Twitter. He received an apology from YouTube, which also said on Twitter that a random employee was performing a manual review that canceled his channel. It is also worth stating that his channel did not violate any YouTube policy.
Thoughts
As a former Google employee, this incident was both absurd, shocking, and disappointing.
Absurd because a random, unknown, faceless employee in YouTube has the power to delete and ban anybody in their platform without any strikes or even any warning or notice. I remember Google being diligent on processes and checks and balances to prevent this kind of thing from occurring. Code reviews and the interview process were good examples of strict checks inherent in the culture that extended to product ideas, policies, protocols, etc. However, I am not sure how and why this crazy breakdown happened.
Shocking because this did not seem Googly or Google-like. But then again, I have been far removed from Google for almost a decade. So I can understand that Google is an entirely different company from when I joined and even when I left. YouTube has also always had its own sub-culture, but this is a behavior I would not have expected at all.
I am disappointed because I remember back in 2010 when Google stood up to China’s censorship by closing its offices and services in that country. The Chinese government forced Google to filter the search results in mainland China with information only approved by the PRC. I remember feeling an incredible sense of pride because Google faced an oppressive government, did not compromise, and put principle before profit. Google’s mission is to make information universally accessible to everyone, and its slogan is “Don’t be evil.” These principles were also in the spirit of anything we did back then, whether launching products, adding features, creating tools, acquiring companies, hiring, customer/partner relationships, etc. Again, I can understand that Google now is an entirely different beast, but I just hoped that this spirit remained.
It seems the only reason Pomp’s channel got reinstated was his large following and made enough noise for YouTube to pay attention. However, there are probably more cases of accounts disappearing forever and not seeing the light of day anymore because they had less “power” or did not have that large platform as Pomp. And the only reason they got canceled was a random YouTube employee not liking their content or making a mistake.
An important question from this debacle is should platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have this much power? As the original and literal Web Guy would say: “With great power comes great responsibility.” YouTube did not act with responsibility. So should there be consequences or punishment if companies wield their power carelessly or haphazardly? I believe so. It just makes sense to me, even more so if it violates the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. However, accountability and enforcement is another story.
This highlights a greater need for decentralized systems where responsible users will not be treated irresponsibly or unfairly. This is the hope for Web3.0 and the coming era of decentralization. I hope it comes sooner than later, especially for the many legitimate netizens who were digitally executed because their ideals or content did not agree with a “random, unknown employee” of such a platform.
Here is the interview that caused the deletion of Pomp’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytmhmixeCRo
