IN FEBRUARY 2024, without warning, YouTube deleted the account of independent British journalist Robert Inlakesh.

His YouTube page featured dozens of videos, including numerous livestreams documenting Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. In a decade covering Palestine and Israel, he had captured video of Israeli authorities demolishing Palestinian homes, police harassing Palestinian drivers, and Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian civilians and journalists during protests in front of illegal Israeli settlements. In an instant, all of that footage was gone.

In July, YouTube deleted Inlakesh’s private backup account. And in August, Google, YouTube’s parent company, deleted his Google account, including his Gmail and his archive of documents and writings.

The tech giant initially claimed Inlakesh’s account violated YouTube’s community guidelines. Months later, the company justified his account termination by alleging his page contained spam or scam content.

However, when The Intercept inquired further about Inlakesh’s case, nearly two years after his account was deleted, YouTube provided a separate and wholly different explanation for the termination: a connection to an Iranian influence campaign.

In February 2024, without warning, YouTube deleted the account of independent British journalist Robert Inlakesh.

His YouTube page featured dozens of videos, including numerous livestreams documenting Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. In a decade covering Palestine and Israel, he had captured video of Israeli authorities demolishing Palestinian homes, police harassing Palestinian drivers, and Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian civilians and journalists during protests in front of illegal Israeli settlements. In an instant, all of that footage was gone.

YouTube declined to provide evidence to support this claim, stating that the company doesn’t discuss how it detects influence operations. Inlakesh remains unable to make new Google accounts, preventing him from sharing his video journalism on the largest English language video platform.

Inlakesh, now a freelance journalist, acknowledged that from 2019 to 2021 he worked from the London office of the Iranian state-owned media organization Press TV, which is under U.S. sanctions. Even so, Inlakesh said that should not have led to the erasure of his entire YouTube account, the vast majority of which was his own independent content that was posted before or after his time at Press TV.

YouTube offered multiple explanations for deleting the account of Robert Inlakesh, who covered Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The post A Journalist Reported From Palestine. YouTube Deleted His Account Claiming He’s an Iranian Agent appeared first on The Intercept.

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