[2] In February 2003, Google stopped showing advertisements from Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting against a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices.
[5] In March 2007, the lower-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps showing post-Hurricane Katrina damage in Louisiana, US, was allegedly replaced with higher resolution images from before the storm.
In the United States, Google commonly filters search results to comply with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)-related legal complaints.
[14] In Germany and France, a study reported that approximately 113 white nationalist, Nazi, antisemitic, Islamic extremist, and other similar websites had been removed from the German and French versions of Google.
On 19 June 2014, Google was ordered by the Supreme Court of British Columbia to remove search results that linked to websites of a company called Datalink.
[49] The Chinese government had restricted citizens' access to popular search engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo, and Google in the past, though the complete ban has since been lifted[when?].
[50] Google pledged to tell users when search results are censored and said that it would not "maintain any services that involve personal or confidential data, such as Gmail or Blogger, on the mainland".
[52] Furthermore, Google had been denounced and called hypocritical by the Free Media Movement and Reporters Without Borders for agreeing to China's demands while simultaneously fighting the United States government's requests for similar information.
[60][61][62] In August 2018, it was revealed that Google was working on a version of its search engine for use in China, which would censor content according to the restrictions placed by the Chinese government.
[69] Other articles, including one about French office workers using post-it notes and another about a collapsed fraud trial of a solicitor standing for election to the Law Society's ruling body, were affected.
[74][75] An article about the conversion to Islam of the brother of George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was removed after a request to Google from an unknown person under the right-to-be-forgotten ruling.
[81] The Telegraph also reported that links to articles concerning a student's 2008 drink-driving conviction and a 2001 case that resulted in two brothers each receiving nine-month jail terms for affray had been removed.
In the case of Germany, violent or sex-related sites such as YouPorn and BME that the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien deems harmful to youth are also censored.
[90] The WordPress site lists Swedish Jews in the public sphere, and also agitates against the dominant publishing house Bonnier Group, the owner of both newspapers.
Ministers in the Swedish green-left government agreed with this sentiment, and threatened with national and EU regulation unless Google adapt its algorithms and delist contents of "threats and hate" (hot och hat).
[98] Critics have voiced concerns that private international companies are mandated to put censorship into effect to comply with local regulations without guidance from courts, and that free speech is deteriorating at an accelerating rate.
[99][100][101] In September 2016, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare revealed that Google had agreed to censor search results and advertising of prenatal sex discernment, which is illegal in India.
[104] On 21 September 2006,[14] it was reported that Google had "delisted" Inquisition 21, a website that claims to challenge moral authoritarian and sexually absolutist ideas in the United Kingdom.
[108] In mid-2016, Google conducted a two-month standoff with writer Dennis Cooper after deleting his Blogger and Gmail accounts without warning or explanation following a single anonymous complaint.
While the court writes that "[They] have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods", OpenMedia spokesman, David Christopher, warns that "there is great risk that governments and commercial entities will see this ruling as justifying censorship requests that could result in perfectly legal and legitimate content disappearing off the web because of a court order in the opposite corner of the globe".
In September 2007, YouTube blocked the account of Wael Abbas, an Egyptian activist who posted videos of police brutality, voting irregularities and antigovernmental demonstrations under the Mubarak regime.
[1] In February 2008, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority banned YouTube in the country, but the manner in which it performed the block accidentally prevented access to the website worldwide for several hours.
[132] In March 2018, The Atlantic found that YouTube had delisted a video where journalist Daniel Lombroso reported a speech by white nationalist Richard B. Spencer at the 2016 annual conference of the National Policy Institute, where they celebrated Donald Trump's win at the presidential election.
The policy extends to content that justifies discrimination, segregation, or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.
[138][139] In early February 2021, YouTube removed raw footage taken of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol by independent journalists like Ford Fischer from News2Share or from progressive media outlets such as Status Coup citing that the videos violated its policies on misinformation.
[143][144] In June 2021, MIT Technology Review and Reuters reported that YouTube removed videos of a human rights group documenting testimonies of the persecution of Uyghurs in China.
[145][146] In October 2023, Radio Free Asia reported that YouTube repeatedly removed channels satirizing General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping on the grounds of "cyberbullying".
Following its introduction, many prominent YouTube users began to accuse the site of engaging in de facto censorship, arbitrarily disabling monetization on videos discussing various topics such as skincare, politics, and LGBTQ history.
A YouTube spokesperson stated that "[w]hile [their] policy of demonetizing videos due to advertiser-friendly concerns hasn't changed, [they've] recently improved the notification and appeal process to ensure better communication to [their] creators.
'"[165][166] Thus, Google was trying to protect itself from Russian sanctions, as well as its employees from persecution within Russia, in connection with the new law, which provided up to 15 years in prison for any information about the war against Ukraine, except when officially announced by the Kremlin.