(ZENIT News / Madrid, 10.11.2023).- Last Friday, November 3, 2023, the HM Television channel in English was closed by YouTube without once giving prior notice.
“If a video infringes YouTube’s policies it must be given three notices over a ninety-day period. We hadn’t received any. Reviewing our e-mails, we found one in SPAM in which we were informed of the immediate closure of our channel, arbitrarily accused of SPAM. It is significant to be accused of SPAM by an e-mail that goes into SPAM . . . ,“ says the person in charge of HM Television.
And adds: “We claim the proven moment demonstrating that at no time they committed that offense. Our contents do not infringe YouTube’s policy: we have not used the videos to deceive or cheat anyone, they aren’t even monetized, because we have never had the intention to obtain economic benefit: we have only tried to evangelize, entrusting the channel’s future to God’s Providence.”
The response was not long in coming. It was this:
Channel: HM Television (English). After reviewing your channel carefully, we have confirmed that it infringes our policy on SPAM, deceptive practices and scams. We understand that it’s not the best of news, but we must take care that YouTube is a safe place for all users.
How does this affect your channel: We will not restore your channel on YouTube.
In the past, other channels of Catholic content suffered similar abuses for the same reason – really – that ours has been removed: for its clearly Catholic content. We are referring to Magnificat TV, of Fr. Santiago Martín; EWTN in Poland; Tekton, of the Young People of Saint Joseph . . . but they were returned thanks to the popular clamour. For this reason, those at HM Television ask for help to defend the channel whose sole objective has been to promote the Truth.
The video that we have most felt losing is the English version of the documentary “Either Everything or Nothing. Sister Clare Crockett”, whose subtitles can be read in Croatian, Chinese, Armenian, Slovakian, Indonesian and Hungarian, with its many commentaries and visualizations. Every day they received testimonies, both in writing as well as by word, of the great spiritual good that this documentary was doing: many conversations, young people that discover or accept their vocation to consecrated life or the priesthood; vocations “saved inn a moment of crisis; graces received . . . many lives changed by the witness of conversion and surrender to God of Sister Clare.” You can see a small sample of this in the section “They write to us” of the Web wwwhermanaclare.com
Another video, which had a great impact and visualizations and commentaries in the almost ten years it has published, is the witness of the conversion of Mario Joseph, young Indian converted to Christianity from Islam. In Spanish it has already been a video with repercussion, but in English it surpassed one million visualizations.
“While waiting to see how all this ends, we have opened a new channel in English to be able to continue evangelizing in this language. This is the link. If you can help us spread it, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” they said to ZENIT.
