Roger Ver-y angry over Bitcoin.com YouTube takedown

This week’s social media crypto-bashing award recipient is…  Roger Ver for the Bitcoin.com YouTube takedown!

Bitcoin.com CEO Ver is the founder of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a BTC-fork that is currently the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

In a video uploaded to Reddit’s r/BTC subreddit late Sunday night, Ver revealed that the day before, on June 13, YouTube had “banned the official Bitcoin.com YouTube channel, for basically no reason.”

YouTube restored the site, which has more than 40,000 subscribers, by midday on June 15.

Like many Bitcoin and cryptocurrency YouTubers, Ver was given only the vaguest of official reason for the takedown, with Bitcoin.com labeled as containing “harmful content.”

Ver was also a participant on Cointelegraph’s livestreamed Bitcoin Halving party, which was cut off halfway through the scheduled seven-hour event, also “for being ‘Harmful Content,” the cryptocurrency news site reported on May 11.

After the Bitcoin.com YouTube takedown

YouTube has a history of capriciously taking down Bitcoin and blockchain based videos. In this they are not alone. Amazon, Twitter, Google, and Facebook have all taken an on-again, off-again hard line against Bitcoin and crypto advertising and content over the past few years.

Now, Ver said he’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take this anymore. Specifically, he used the message to announce that he’s looking for an alternate streaming video host for bitcoin.com. 

“I’m not sure if they’ll reinstate it, but even if they do, now seems like the right time to start exploring other options,” he added. 

After saying on the video that he was looking at moving the official Bitcoin.com channel to one of several blockchain-based streaming video sites including Lbry.tv, DTube, and BitChute, Ver announced that the official Bitcoin.com video channel is migrating to Lbry.tv.

Ver asked BCH supporters to suggest other potential streaming video host sites in the comment section of these videos.

“Where should we put this,” he asked. “What should we start using other than a YouTube, since now they’re busy censoring all sorts of channels while they let the scam giveaways go.”

That conclusion echos the one Chris Dunn of NextGen Venture Partners came to after his five-year-old “Chris Dunn TV” YouTube channel was taken down for several days during the YouTube Christmas cryptocurrency purge.

That began on Dec. 23, when more than two dozen well-regarded YouTube crypto channels were suddenly taken down without warning. While the company apologized on Jan. 27 after restoring all the channels, several hosts noted that it made for a very stressful holiday.

Bitcoin maximalists to blame? 

On his Reddit video, Ver suggested that YouTube did not act alone. “I suspect probably a bunch of these Bitcoin Core anti-competition maximalists falsely reported the video, saying it’s a B-cash scam or some nonsense like that,” said Ver. 

“Meanwhile, on YouTube, there’s tons of these fake videos claiming Elon Musk is giving away ETH to all the SpaceX supporter,” Ver added.

Those scam sites all have videos—some of which, he noted, falsely depict him as supporting their schemes. These often include some variation of, “send us some ether or bitcoin and we’ll send you back a lot more,” he said. 

In its YouTube appeal of the ban, Bitcoin.com noted that it is “an active political voice within the cryptocurrency community.” 

As a result, it added, “we believe that due to our political activism we have been unfairly ‘brigaded’ by political opponents who have abused the YouTube reporting mechanism to bring down our channel.”

Ver is not the only cryptocurrency influencer upset about social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook’s handling of takedown notices, as well as scam videos and ads featuring high profile members of the Bitcoin community.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently entered the fray, suing YouTube for failing to take down false scam ads that use his likeness, videos of him speaking, and Ripple’s logos and trademarks.  

“YouTube’s inertia is indicative of an industry-wide problem of a lack of accountability,” Garlinghouse said in an April 21 Twitter chain announcing the lawsuit. “Victims are forced to jump through hoops to report these scams, and oftentimes that doesn’t even work – ex: when Instagram told me I wasn’t being impersonated.”