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ISRAEL – You start a video on YouTube or a game of Angry Birds on your smartphone and suddenly you are no longer confronted with the usual advertising that lasts a few seconds, but with propaganda images from the Israeli authorities.
Since the resurgence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ten days ago, the offensives on the Israeli side have also been carried out digitally in order to convince the international public of the merits of the attack on Gaza, which is being prepared in response to the first attacks. of Hamas.
Since the beginning of the Israeli counteroffensive, many Internet users have reported Israeli propaganda videos on social networks, usually in the form of a pre-roll “advertisement” before the video is broadcast. A video on YouTube, or even within games on smartphones.
The day after the Hamas attacks on Israeli territory, on October 8, a first propaganda video was broadcast in France as an advertisement on YouTube for at least 24 hours, notes Arrêt sur Images. In all caps you could read a message without a picture, read by an automated voice against the background of unsettling music. “Hamas has declared war on Israel,” it says in particular. “Israelis, including children, were killed, injured and taken hostage. This is a war and Israel will take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from these barbaric terrorists. » The video ends with the coat of arms of the State of Israel.
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The video, which was also published on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s YouTube channel, was broadcast in particular before videos from major French YouTubers such as Squeezie, Villibrequin, Joueur du Grenier or Bolchegeek. They do not have the power to delete the video or select its content, but can simply decide when it appears in their own video.
Childish video with unicorns and rainbows
More videos turned into “ads” have since appeared in the “pre-roll,” like this one noted by an Internet user on Twitter, which states that “Hamas, a violent terrorist organization, murdered 1,300 innocent Israelis – children, women, and others. “Elderly people – they massacre entire families in their homes.” The same video was also posted on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s YouTube channel for four days and was viewed more than 3.3 million times.
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On Twitter, an internet user also posted a video of himself navigating the menus of the game Angry Birds 2 on a tablet before a video appears on the screen proclaiming that “Israel is under attack” before revealing images, trigger fear of the current situation.
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There was also a particularly childish video aimed at families with young children, featuring lots of unicorns, rainbows and the color pink. “We have an important message for parents: 40 children were murdered by Hamas terrorists,” it says in particular.
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Now the question arises: Does YouTube really allow such videos to be displayed as “advertising”? The answer is not obvious if we look closely at the rules governing the operation of the platform, as Numerama.com did.
An “advertisement” withdrawn in 2021
YouTube therefore advises that “ads that could exploit a sensitive event with significant social, cultural or political impact, such as: “Civil crises, natural disasters, public health emergencies, terrorist and related acts, conflicts or acts of mass violence” are not permitted.
However, there is an exception to this rule: “If an ad contains professional media content (e.g. films, television series, news channels or video games), the above guidelines will be evaluated according to different criteria.” Any ad containing professional media content must make its sources clear so that the user understands what he is seeing. »
Current Israeli videos do not contain purely violent images and the content comes from an official source. YouTube could therefore choose to rate them according to “various criteria”. But since they mention very violent acts such as killing civilians, they could logically be deleted in the future.
In the past, in 2021, Google (which bought YouTube in 2006) had the Israeli state withdraw a particularly disturbing “advertisement” against “Hamas terrorism” that was broadcast as an introduction to videos on YouTube, particularly in France. The video showed around fifteen seconds of furtive images of rockets in the sky, explosions in civilian areas and injured people, all accompanied by the sounds of explosions and screams. “Israel will protect its citizens from Hamas terrorism,” concluded a message flanked by the coat of arms of the Israeli state.
Last Friday, the European Commission reminded Alphabet, Google’s parent company, of its moderation obligations on its YouTube platform as the number of illegal content and online disinformation increases, particularly related to the war between Israel and Hamas.
She emphasized that Google has a “special obligation to protect the millions of children and young people” who use YouTube “from violent content involving hostage situations and other shocking videos.”
See also on HuffPost:
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