Dave Rubin and Thomas Sowell

    

Political commentator and host of “The Rubin Report” Dave Rubin has claimed that YouTube demonetized a segment of his video interview with famed economist Thomas Sowell. The segment reportedly targeted is the first part of the full interview, titled “Thomas Sowell on Facts and Free Speech.”

Rubin is the host of The Rubin Report, an online talk show that covers numerous topics including social issues and politics. Rubin’s videos have also featured discussions with public figures including Philip DeFranco, Bob Saget, Jack Conte, John Kasich, Laci Green, Larry King, Roseanne Barr, Austin Petersen, and Adam Carolla.

Through a series of tweets, Rubin explained that the video was initially monetized before becoming demonetized.

YouTube eventually confirmed that “the automated system recently applied a yellow icon,” and stated that “a video’s classification may change after it’s published as our systems continue to analyze more info from the video.” YouTube added that “this video has yet to be manually reviewed, so please request one!”

Rubin replied that he had already requested a manual review and questioned how the content of the video would warrant demonetization, as well as Youtube’s protocols for reviewing video.

This is not the first incident in which Rubin has claimed that his videos were demonetized. As early as May 2017, Rubin discussed the issue and claimed that demonetization of his videos led to a decrease in revenue of 60 percent.

In January, Rubin stated that YouTube had demonetized an interview with Ben Shapiro, the Editor-in-Chief of Daily Wire. Later in the month, Rubin made another claim regarding demonetization of a video that criticized socialism.

In February, he again publicly called out YouTube for demonetizing a video interview with Shapiro and Jordan Peterson while showing ads on the video in question. In that incident, The Daily Caller reported that when it had asked for an explanation from YouTube, a spokesperson “blamed the original demonetization on the platform’s algorithms.”

In March, Ben Swann published a Reality Check that explored the topic of tech giants censoring certain content, noting that targets are often content creators that are “not part of the establishment structure.”