Sansad TV’s YouTube account restored, channel says it had been compromised by ‘scamsters’
The account was terminated earlier in the day and its name changed to ‘Ethereum’, a popular cryptocurrency, the government-owned channel said.
Indian government-owned television channel Sansad TV’s YouTube account was restored on Tuesday evening, hours after being terminated by the platform for allegedly violating its community guidelines.
In a tweet, Sansad TV said that the outage was due to a “hacker attack” and the media had misrepresented the matter by reporting that the account had violated YouTube guidelines. However, during the period when the account was unavailable, YouTube displayed a message saying its guidelines had been violated.
Before the account was restored, Sansad TV had said that the account had been compromised “due to unauthorised activities by some scamsters”. The account’s name was also changed to “Ethereum”, the name of a popular cryptocurrency, according to a press release by Sansad TV
“However, Sansad TV’s social media team promptly worked on it and got the Sansad TV channel restored by early morning at around 03:45 am,” the release had said. “YouTube has started fixing the security threats permanently and it shall be restored ASAP [as soon as possible].”
The YouTube channel of Sansad TV was compromised by some scamsters on Feb 15, 2022. Youtube is addressing the security threat and the issue will be resolved asap. pic.twitter.com/k1DI7HmZTh
— SansadTV (@sansad_tv) February 15, 2022
Technology company Google, which owns YouTube has not yet said which guidelines had been violated. An e-mail sent by The Indian Express to Google, reportedly did not receive a response.
While the channel’s YouTube account was not operational, the Sansad TV Lok Sabha account on the social media platform was functioning.
Sansad TV was created in March 2021 by merging Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV. The channel broadcasts live proceedings from both Houses of Parliament as well as some recorded programmes.
According to YouTube’s community guidelines page, the platform enforces the regulations using a combination of human reviewers and machine learning. The platform states that it applies the guidelines to everyone equally, “regardless of the subject or the creator’s background, political viewpoint, position or affiliation”.
The violations and restrictions listed in the guidelines pertain to fake engagement, impersonation, child safety, nudity and sexual content, among other things.