Attorney General Merrick Garland delivering remarks on enforcement actions to disrupt Russian criminal activity, April 6, 2022. On Sept. 4, 2024, Garland announced new actions aimed at disrupting Russian influence campaigns. (U.S. Department of Justice)
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube took down several right-wing politics channels that had been linked with allegations from the Justice Department that Russian government employees were paying right-wing influencers in the United States to produce content.
The Google-owned video site “terminated” Tenet Media and four other channels run by right-wing media entrepreneur Lauren Chen as part of the company’s “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations,” a YouTube spokesperson said in an emailed statement Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian government-backed media organization RT, formerly known as Russia Today, accusing them of illegally funding a Tennessee-based media organization. The government has not specifically mentioned Tenet, but a quote from the media organization’s YouTube channel listed in the indictment suggest it is the media organization targeted. Some right-wing influencers have subsequently identified Tenet as the company in the indictment.
Tennessee business records list Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, as the owners of Tenet Media. On Thursday, Chen’s contributor contract with conservative media organization Blaze TV was terminated, Semafor reported. Prosecutors allege that the founders of the media company in the indictment knew their funding was coming from Moscow and privately acknowledged in messages to each other that their backers were Russian.
Tenet Media did not immediately return a request for comment sent through a contact form on its website.
YouTube was the main platform for videos produced by Tenet Media and is popular with conservative media personalities, including those who had worked with Tenet, such as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin. In the weeks after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, YouTube took down RT’s channels, which had been globally popular on the platform.
YouTube is the only major western social media site still available inside Russia, where it remains popular. But in recent months, the Russian government has stepped up its throttling of the site, degrading quality for many users in the country.
