STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT-Moscow. YouTube has blocked Russian “state-sponsored media” globally but continues to operate in Russia so people there can access the same so-called “authoritative” information as the attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the CEO of the Google-owned video platform, Susan Wojcicki, claimed on Tuesday. The conflict in Ukraine showed how information can be used as a weapon, she added.
When the conflict in Ukraine broke out, YouTube “realized this was an incredibly important time for us to get it right, with regard to our responsibility,” Wojcicki said in an interview with Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell, part of this week’s annual meeting of the global forum.
“What we’re really seeing in this conflict is that information does play a key role, that information can be weaponized,” Wojcicki added.
YouTube has made “really tough decisions,” she said, such as shutting down accounts of Russian media, not just in the EU – which imposed a controversial ban in early March – but globally. This was done on the basis of the platform’s internal policy, although they had received “lots of requests from various governments” to do so, Wojcicki revealed.
The office of President Yoon Suk-yeol harshly denounced Pyongyang’s test – which involved at least three projectiles, including what was believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – calling it a “grave provocation that violates UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and threatens international peace.”
Yoon also ordered “measures for the activation of extended deterrence and strengthening of the South Korea-US combined defense posture” and to enhance readiness across Seoul’s military.
Pyongyang’s 17th missile test this year came soon after US President Joe Biden departed Japan for Washington following his first official visit to Asia, which lasted five days.
Officials in Seoul say the presumed ICBM traveled around 224 miles (360km) and reached an altitude of 335 miles (540km). Japan also detected the launch, reporting that one missile flew in an “irregular trajectory” for a distance of around 466 miles (750km), while the country’s defense chief said it landed just outside of Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
