Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

As YouTube Cracks Down On Holocaust Denial, It Deletes Anti-Semitism Researcher’s Account

As YouTube cracks down on Holocaust denial on its video platform, it has deleted the account of a prominent anti-Semitism researcher, seemingly in error, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

On Wednesday, YouTube said in a press release that it would begin deleting videos from its site that “alleg[e] that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on” protected categories. The statement said that that included videos that glorified the Nazis or deny “well documented events,” of which the site listed the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook shooting as examples.

But the policy change seemed to catch David Collier, an anti-Semitism researcher in the U.K., on accident.

“It’s so hurtful,” Collier wrote on Twitter. “Hours and hours of unique, irreplaceable footage gone,” he said. “Oh the antisemities are dancing today!”

Collier has gained prominence in the U.K. for researching instances of anti-Semitic statements from politicians in the country’s left-wing Labour party.

By Thursday, Collier had had his account restored.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.