Among the many apps that I first check when I wake up in the morning is Twitter. I still have to prepare my morning cup of coffee and “ABS-CBN News” began trending in the Philippines (went as high as 6th spot at around noontime).
In some of the Facebook Messenger groups that I belong to, the topic of this morning was the “termination” of ABS-CBN News’ YouTube channel. Searched for “ABS-CBN News” on YouTube, and I could not find their channel anymore. Tried clicking on the links from the social media account of TV Patrol, and I was shown this Error 404 (File Not Found) page:
A few moments later, the network have this posted across their social media channels:
Apparently, it was not just the “ABS-CBN News” YouTube channel that was taken offline; the “ANC” channel was also nowhere to be found.
The reaction of netizens were mixed. I saw some reactions in Twitter blaming the government for “shutting down” the YouTube accounts of ABS-CBN News. While some were saying that the YouTube accounts were hacked. There are also people saying that the video streaming channels were terminated by YouTube, themselves due to some violations from the side of ABS-CBN.
Let Us Analyze Things
Theory 1: The Philippine Government Asked YouTube to Shutdown the Account
Perhaps the most absurd reason I read today on why the ABS-CBN News YouTube channels were taken offline: the government asked Google (YouTube) to shut it down.
I was literally “LOL”-ing at this kind of reasoning earlier.
Though in extreme situations (say at times of a national crisis or act of terrorism), technically, any government may ask any website operator to put any contents offline for a certain period of time. But in this case, as a techie, nope, I don’t think the Philippine government has had a hand on this.
At YouTube, we work hard to maintain a safe and vibrant community. We have Community Guidelines that set the rules of the road for what we don’t allow on YouTube. For example, we do not allow pornography, incitement to violence, harassment, or hate speech. We rely on a combination of people and technology to flag inappropriate content and enforce these guidelines. Flags can come from our automated flagging systems, from members of the Trusted Flagger program (NGOs, government agencies, and individuals) or from users in the broader YouTube community. This report provides data on the flags YouTube receives and how we enforce our policies.
From https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/
Theory 2: ABS-CBN Violated the YouTube Terms & Conditions
Another theory I read today was that ABS-CBN violated the Terms and Conditions of YouTube. A social media account defending the network has released a statement claiming that this theory is “Fake News” as explained below:
Though it is not remote that the broadcast network erred and indeed violated any of the YouTube Terms and Conditions, let us give them the benefit of the doubt (for now).
Theory 3: The YouTube Accounts were Hacked
Among the many reactions I saw on social media (not just on Twitter) today was the claim that the YouTube accounts were indeed hacked.
I reached out to Google/YouTube for comments on this incident, and based on the official statement that they released to members of the press this afternoon:
“We take account security very seriously and notify account owners when we detect suspicious activity. If an owner has reason to believe their account was compromised, they can notify our team to secure the account and regain control,” according to a YouTube spokesperson.
Just before 1600H (Manila Time), both the ABS-CBN News and ANC 24/7 YouTube channels are back online.
The network also released the following statement:
My Personal Take on This Incident
People hack websites and social accounts for many reasons. Among these reasons are:
- To steal or leak information
- To disrupt services
- To make a point
- To ask for money (ransom)
- Hacktivism, Idealism, or Political Motives
As of today, these are the subscriber counts of the following ABS-CBN YouTube channels:
- ABS-CBN Entertainment = 30.5M subscribers
- ABS-CBN News = 10.6M subscribers
- ANC 24/7 = 316K subscribers
The combined number of subscribers for ABS-CBN News and ANC 24/7 is just 10.9M; not even half of the total number of subscribers for ABS-CBN Entertainment.
Why am I showing you these stats? If we are considering that indeed, the two (02) YouTube channels of ABS-CBN were hacked, then what could be the reason/s? A bad hacker can be compared to a terrorist — they inflict maximum harm.
If you think that taking down two (02) YouTube channels that produces news content and with just 10.9M subscribers can do much harm, why didn’t the hackers penetrated the ABS-CBN Entertainment channel that has more than 30M subscribers?
How can a big company, a broadcast enterprise like ABS-CBN be a victim of such hacking? What took YouTube so long to restore the “hacked” accounts (the channels were down from 0630H up to 1558H — that’s more than 09 hours)?
Were the YouTube channels of ABS-CBN News and ANC 24/7 really hacked?
Who were the hackers? What kind of hacking was done on the YouTube channels? As of this posting, not a single hacker group made a claim that they “hacked” into the YouTube channels. A colleague also commented that the possibility of this being an “inside job” is not far from reality.
In this day and age of modern technology, almost everything is possible. Everyone needs to take cybersecurity seriously. For me, the primary best defense for any cyber attack is still commonsense.