‘YouTube Alternative’ Vimeo Bans ‘Fake News’ and ‘Conspiracy Theories’

Vimeo, a video hosting platform that markets itself as an alternative to YouTube, has updated its terms of service to ban “fake news” and “conspiracy theories” that creates “a serious risk of material harm to a person, group, or the general public.”

The video sharing platform’s previous terms were also fairly restrictive, banning any content that “contains hateful or discriminatory speech,” supports “hate groups,” contains false information about “vaccination safety,” “false or misleading information about voting,” or “contains conspiracy-related content where the underlying conspiracy theory makes claims that… suggest that a real-world tragedy did not occur.”

Vimeo’s new terms of service have expanded the scope of prohibited content to include “false or misleading information (including fake news, deepfakes, propaganda, or unproven or debunked conspiracy theories) that creates a serious risk of material harm to a person, group, or the general public.”

The tightening of Vimeo’s terms of service comes after the platform attracted attention, along with the free speech friendly video platforms Odysee and Rumble, for hosting Ukraine on Fire, a documentary featuring Oliver Stone taking a critical look at the United States’ involvement in Ukraine over the past decade.

The documentary was banned on YouTube last week for “graphic content,” despite being hosted on the Google-owned platform for six years without issue.

The Ukraine war has seen a number of companies that previously marketed themselves as alternatives to Big Tech companies like YouTube engage in the same kind of censorship strategies employed by the largest tech behemoths.

DuckDuckGo, one of the most popular alternatives to Google Search, announced last week that it would down-rank any sites that it determines to be “associated with disinformation.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.