Indian news channels on YouTube are battling arbitrary blocking, curbs on earnings

At 1am on April 4, Haseen Rehmani, the founder of Bolta Hindustan, a Hindi news YouTube channel received an email from YouTube, stating that their channel had been blocked due to a notice received from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The notice was “issued under Rule 15(2) of the IT Rules, 2021, read with sec 69A of the IT Act, 2000” and had been kept confidential, meaning that Rehmani had no idea why his channel had been blocked.

Initially fearing it to be a hacking attempt on his channel, Rehmani did not click on the link provided in the email and wrote no response. Instead, he copied the link and sent it via WhatsApp to a phone that was not connected to Bolta Hindustan, and clicked on it. The channel that opened up was his: it was still there.

In the morning, when he checked, the channel was still up and Rehamni and his colleagues took a few screenshots of the channel. At noon, they decided to upload a video. As soon as they pressed the publish button, they received an email that their channel had been removed. An appeal filed later to YouTube was also rejected without any reason being provided.

Prior to its...

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