It seems that the YouTube channel of Alexandra Jost, aka Sasha Meets Russia, has once again been removed from that platform. This is the second time this has occurred.
While the removal may have been the act of YouTube’s management, it is far more likely that Ukrainian and pro-Ukraine bots are behind the removal, via a mass flagging campaign.
We hear a lot about “Russian bots” on the Internet. These do exist. But we don’t hear so much about Ukrainian bots; and these exist, too. (We should all remember that both Russia and Ukraine have a legacy in the former USSR and its methods.)
Jost is an American expat who has been residing in Moscow for several years. Her mother is Russian, and she speaks that language fluently. Her YouTube videos were always a mix of human interest stories and commentary.
And yes, that commentary had a distinctive spin. I fully recognize that Ms. Jost is/was engaged in advocacy journalism. Her pro-Russian views are rather transparent; and there are even reports (unsubstantiated though plausible) that she is on the payroll of one of the Russian state media agencies.
But so what? I come from the twentieth century. In those days—which include the Cold War with the USSR—we trusted people to take in information from all sources, and to then make judgements for themselves.
My high school history teacher exposed us to translated versions of Pravda. I read The Communist Manifesto in college. Funny thing—despite all that exposure to “Russian propaganda”, I never became a Soviet agent. I was never converted to Marxism-Leninism. In fact, reading/hearing the Kremlin’s viewpoints usually made me more certain in the beliefs of my own culture.
But those were more open-minded and sophisticated times. In this intellectually simplistic era, it is often Internet mobs and tech bosses who decide which viewpoints will be heard, and which ones will be censored.
This is especially true on social media. On YouTube, for example, it is now virtually impossible to find a YouTube channel on the Russo-Ukrainian War that isn’t pure Ukrainian agitprop.
-ET