93-year-old YouTuber back in business after being kicked off platform over porn allegation

Metta Spencer, a 93-year-old retired University of Toronto professor, recently had her YouTube channel removed due to accusations of broadcasting pornography. Spencer, a sociologist known for hosting discussions with global leaders on topics such as peace, climate change, pandemics, and cyber risks, tried for weeks to convince YouTube Canada that the explicit content was a result of a hacking attack, but her efforts were unsuccessful.

"They cut me off," Spencer said. "I have [hundreds of] hour-long forum discussions that I have produced, and they were all on YouTube and they took them all out."

Her YouTube channel, To Save the World, was reinstated after intervention from CBC Toronto, who contacted YouTube's parent company, Google.

A spokesperson for Google Canada explained that YouTube’s community guidelines prohibit explicit content and that violating these guidelines could lead to channel termination. "In the case of this channel, we have carefully reviewed the account appeal, removed the video that violated our policies, and reinstated the channel."

Spencer described the process of appealing her channel's removal as frustrating and ineffective. She said that the FAQs, email addresses, and websites provided for users wishing to appeal were "useless." "I'd be ashamed to have you see me when I'm in the throes of that kind of emotional frustration," she added.

Carmi Levy, a tech expert from London, Ont., noted that Spencer's frustration is common for social media users facing account suspensions. "Hardly a day goes by that I don't get some message telling me a story very much like this," Levy said, emphasizing the lack of customer support in large companies like Google. "There are no longer human monitoring teams or human digital safety teams."

Spencer's troubles began on October 27, during a live broadcast of a panel discussion on climate change. The discussion, streamed on YouTube and hosted on Zoom, was interrupted by a "Zoom-bombing" incident where pornographic videos were shown. Spencer struggled to regain control of her computer and remove the intruder. After the disruption, she attempted to upload the forum video to her To Save the World channel but was unable to. The site displayed a message saying, "This page isn't available," and later informed her that the channel had been deactivated for violating community standards.

Spencer attempted to appeal the decision via email but received no response. Levy commented that this kind of "customer service hell" is common for social media platforms, which face little regulation regarding user support.

While Spencer keeps copies of her forums on her hard drive, she lamented the fact that, for weeks, they were inaccessible to the public. Over the years, her channel had hosted prominent figures, including global leaders from the former Soviet Union discussing disarmament, and Canadian parliamentarians and diplomats such as former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, former UN Ambassador Bob Rae, and Alex Neve, the former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

David Price, a retired research scientist and subscriber to Spencer’s channel, expressed concern about the loss of these valuable discussions. "They'd lose the opportunity to get first-hand knowledge about climate change, as presented by a panel of experts," he said. "You get that first-hand exposure to the experts; you get a sense of where there's consensus and where there isn't."

Spencer expressed relief that her channel was restored, saying, "For me, it would have been many years of my life missing." She added that while the situation is absurd, especially for a 93-year-old academic being accused of sharing pornography, "It's not fun. It's serious."