A history teacher has told of his shock at his exam revision YouTube channel being banned during a crackdown on hate speech by the internet giant.
Scott Allsop told Tes he believed his channel had been banned because it contained footage of Nazi leaders giving propaganda speeches.
He said he was aware of two other history teachers who also had their sites suspended by YouTube yesterday.
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The videos on the channel ’Mr Allsop History’ are part of a series of revision aids designed to help pupils prepare for history GCSE, IGCSE, A-level exams and the International Baccalaureate.
Mr Allsop said: “We had just put the kids to bed yesterday when I got an email pop up from YouTube that said that my channel has been permanently suspended for hate speech.
“It was quite shocking to read this and to see your own name next to this term. I felt sick.”
Posting on Twitter, Mr Allsop said: “I’m devastated to have this claim levelled against me, and frustrated 15 years of materials for the history teacher community have ended so abruptly.”
Mr Allsop said he believed his channel had been banned because of the videos relating to Nazi Germany - which he said was only a small percentage of the material on his YouTube channel.
YouTube announced yesterday that it was going further in removing “hateful and supremacist content”.
In a blog it said: “Today, we’re taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.
“This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory.”
Mr Allsop added: “As a history teacher when you teach 20th-century world history quite a lot of the curriculum is geared towards the Nazis.”
He said among the video revision aids he had posted was footage of Adolf Hitler’s speech after he was made chancellor and Joseph Goebbels talking about propaganda and how he used it.
“I assume these videos have been found by an algorithm and that is why my channel was taken down.
“When I posted what had happened on Twitter I got such a reaction of support from the history teacher community. It was quite humbling.”
Mr Allsop was able to appeal to Youtube and his channel has now been restored.
He said: “I think cracking down on hate speech is exactly what YouTube should be doing but it is just that it has had these unintended consequences.
“And as teachers we have a moral and legal obligation to teach young people about the danger of hate speech but to do that we need to be able to show them examples of the rhetoric people in history have used.”
Mr Allsop, who works for a British school in Romania, has been posting videos and podcasts on his channel and website for the past 15 years.
YouTube have been approached for a comment.
