YouTube Freezes Free Keene Uploads for One Week – Please Migrate to LBRY’s Odysee, ASAP

This weekend, the Free Keene YouTube channel received a “strike” for “harmful or dangerous content” and is frozen to any new uploads for a week. Why? Apparently a :15 promo uploaded in 2011 triggered someone – or some newly-running algorithm – and needs to be taken down!

The supposedly offensive promo has a limited amount of footage that could possibly be objectionable. Was it the scenes of two men being arrested? A photo of a massive 420 rally in Central Square in 2009? A man speaking into a megaphone? A photo of a band playing or people playing a card game in Railroad Square? A large group of people standing around the “Welcome to New Hampshire” sign at the Vermont border? The 4:20 pumpkin?

Two days prior to this strike, another decade-old :15 promo was allegedly found objectionable, this one featuring then-libertarian Penn Jillette saying he should move to Keene to join the Free Staters. I appealed the finding, and YouTube reversed it, once again allowing the video to be played. So, when the subsequent takedown happened this weekend, I also appealed it, asking in my appeal where the supposed “harmful or dangerous” content was. They upheld their decision to block the short promo video and give the account a “strike”. Of course, they declined to state exactly what it was in those scant fifteen seconds that was so offensive.

The strike would have been a warning, but the account had recently received a warning in late February when YouTube removed a video promoting the new White Rose Society for violating their “medical misinformation” policy. So, that’s two videos taken down within a few weeks, hence the strike and now the account is not allowed to have uploads or live streams, among other things, for a week.

Luckily, we’ve been cultivating our exit plan from YouTube for years.

In 2018 Free Keene was among the first to join the “YouTube Partner Program” that automatically syncs our YouTube uploads to the decentralized blockchain-based media protocol, LBRY. We’ve promoted LBRY multiple times as they have successfully protected our videos that YouTube has deleted over the years.

Now, YouTube has increased its rate of finding things it doesn’t like about our videos. It may not be long before our entire channel is taken down. If you haven’t looked seriously at LBRY yet, now is the time to do it. In 2020, they launched Odysee, a video platform built on LBRY. I’ve created a handy url to take you right to the Free Keene channel on Odysee: video.freekeene.com. Unlike YouTube, LBRY/Odysee has no strikes and videos cannot be taken down. It’s true content freedom, and blockchain-powered. You can get the LBRY app or just follow our channel on Odysee.

From now on, this :30 migrate-to-LBRY promo will play at the end of every upload I am able to make to YouTube before they shut us down completely: