Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin, and Gemini exchange founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, expressed their opinions on recent efforts at social media censorship. "I've talked before about the rise of corporations regulating governments but here we have Twitter soft-censoring the U.S. president on the grounds of incitement of violence," Buterin said in a May 29 tweet referencing recent Twitter posts from U.S. President Donald Trump. "This is a major escalation and could be a new chapter in relations between corporations and states," Buterin added. A tangled mess of tweets, executive orders, and events Expectations yesterday saw Trump signing an executive order …

Those in the know expect President Trump to sign a fresh executive order today, imposing greater accountability on social media providers. The order draft, labeled at press time as "Preventing Online Censorship," brings further clarity to social media industry boundaries, ABC News said on May 28. "This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!" Trump tweeted on the morning of May 28. The order follows Twitter fact checking efforts Social media powerhouse Twitter recently flagged certain tweets with a fact-check tag. The platform flagged some of Trump's posts about voting and ballots, pinning a noted under the …

YouTube’s censorship rabbit hole is deep, especially when it comes to cryptocurrency topics. Cointelegraph had a full day of programming lined up for a livestream that covered Bitcoin’s third block halving on May 11. The agenda mostly went off without a hitch — fintech luminaries like Tim Draper, Roger Ver, Meltem Demirors and many more shared their time and opinions with Cointelegraph editorial staff over the course of a livestream that lasted just under seven hours. But the stream was blocked and deleted six hours and 42 minutes into a nearly finished program, locking more than 2,000 viewers out of …

While many other accounts have seen reinstatement shortly following their bans in recent days, YouTube has still not brought the CrytptosRus channel back to life. It has now been three weeks since the channel creator's original petition for reinstatement. "My channel is still banned," CryptosRus host, George, told Cointelegraph in an April 28 email, adding that YouTube has not updated him on the situation. "I appealed the decision three times now," he said. YouTube bans for days The social video platform banned and flagged a large number of high profile crypto YouTube accounts in December 2019. Many accounts saw restoration …

On April 29, Cointelegraph participated in a fireside chat event organized by the Webit Foundation. The panel, with the title of “Can blockchain be a solution for the upcoming economic crisis,” featured Roger Ver from Bitcoin.com as the main speaker. Like all events during the Coronavirus pandemic, the panel was held virtually, with its participants dialing in via video conference. The talk was hosted by Dr. Plamen Russev, executive chairman of Webit Foundation. The chat featured Roger Ver, Bitcoin.com’s executive chairman, and Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr, managing editor at Cointelegraph, as a Q&A moderator. Ver’s answers at the panel can be …

Youtube and Mailchimp appear to be continuing their policy of indiscriminate bans in the crypto sphere. The Blockchain Education Network, or BEN, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, saw its Mailchimp account temporarily restricted due to alleged violations of its terms of use. According to a tweet published on April 9, Mailchimp’s automated scanning tool concluded that BEN violates its “acceptable use” policy, which notably restricts marketing of initial coin offerings, or ICOs. The non-profit pointed out that it does not promote ICOs in any way, and noted that this ban adds on top of a similar restriction from Youtube. Specifically, …

On March 24, Cardano (ADA) founder, Charles Hoskinson, streamed a YouTube video titled “On Wikipedia,” in which he berated Wikipedia for applying arbitrary commercial censorship against Cardano. Wikipedia’s censorship of Bitcoin may have led to Satoshi’s disappearance Censorship of cryptocurrency projects is as old as the industry itself. Back in 2010, even Satoshi Nakamoto was frustrated with Wikipedia’s editors for removing Bitcoin’s wiki entry several times. After PayPal severed ties with WikiLeaks, one of Bitcoin’s supporters suggested that becoming the site's new source of donations would generate enough publicity to gain entry into Wikipedia. Satoshi strongly opposed WikiLeak’s adoption of …

In the latest development in the Steem (STEEM) saga, Justin Sun has come under fire for censoring posts on the platform related to the community-driven ‘Hive’ hard fork. On March 19, cryptocurrency influencer Girl Gone Crypto Tweeted a clip to say that her “neutral explainer video” about the March 20 fork had been removed from the Steemit platform: “I made a really neutral explainer video just kind of walking through the announcement, and what’s happening, and what people can expect, and that post was just removed from Steemit.com. What’s really ironic about this is that centralization issues and censorship concerns …

Amid censorship in China of all coronavirus-related content circulating online, Sarah Zheng, a journalist for the South China Morning Post, claimed to have managed to publish an interview made to a doctor about the coronavirus within Ethereum network. According to a tweet published by Zheng, Dr. Ai's words from Wuhan (the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak) were posted on the Internet, thanks to the use of Ethereum blockchain to store its content in the network. Methods used in the interview to avoid censorship The interview, as The Straits Times reports, was also encrypted with QR codes and deliberate typos, leaving …

The Russian communications watchdog has launched an offensive on censorship resistant platforms, including the Telegram Open Network (TON) and privacy browser Tor. Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media — better known as Roskomnadzor — published a notice on March 3 seeking to engage contractors to research and block “anonymous darknet networks” hosting content deemed “extremist” or “restricted”. The Russian-language crypto news outlet Forklog first reported the call for contractors, after it was published by Russia’s General Radio Frequency Center. Roskomnadzor cracks down on anonymous networks Official documents list anonymous protocols, mesh networks, and Internet-of-Things …

In another bout of censorship, YouTube has deleted two videos form two separate crypto channels. Ivan on Tech, a crypto programmer, tweeted that YouTube deleted one of his videos on March 9. The Moon, a technical analyst and news reporter, said the content platform deleted one of his compositions on March 10. YouTube banned many accounts in 2019 Numerous crypto YouTubers suffered bans and strikes near the end of 2019, including Chris Dunn, Crypto Beadles and Altcoin Daily. Chris Dunn noted that YouTube banned his channel for “harmful or dangerous content” and the “sale of regulated goods.” Responding to The …

A petition taking aim at Google for censoring cryptocurrency-related content across its platforms is gaining traction on Twitter. #ForkGoogle’s memorandum accuses Google and its subsidiary YouTube of waging “campaigns of suppression against Bitcoin and blockchain industry for years.” The post seeks to inspire a coming together of blockchain companies and stakeholders to push back against Google's censorship. Google’s silent war on crypto The memorandum accuses Google of censoring cryptocurrency content through a variety of means — including blocking ad campaigns and removing apps related to crypto from Google Play and deleting or restricting access to information about cryptocurrencies. The post …