Censorship and Timidity

YouTube censored took Alexei Navalny’s material down from the video sharing social media platform ahead of the Russian “election” of Vladimir Putin to yet another term as President. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, in an interview with Bloomberg refused to say whether she ordered the material removed at the behest of Putin.

Bloomberg: Navalny said that YouTube deleted a video—one of his videos. Was that at the request of the Russian government?
Wojcicki: I mean, we certainly, we certainly get requests from government. Umm, and, and we look and consider what, you know, why are we getting the request, what’s actually happening on the ground, umm, and based on a whole bunch of different factors, we make a decision. We don’t always, those are not always requests that make sense for us to honor, but in certain cases, we will honor them, um, in that country.

Since Wojcicki is too timid to explain her company’s censorship, apparently at the behest of “that country”—Russia—the question should be put to her boss, Google CEO Sundar Pichai. If that individual is too jittery regarding Putin to answer the question, it should be put to his boss, Alphabet CEO…Sundar Pichai.

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