Facebook pledges to censor 'any and all' content mentioning whistleblower's identity, YouTube follows suit

Facebook and YouTube announced Friday they would censor content that mentions the name of the government whistleblower who filed a complaint President Donald Trump, which sparked the impeachment inquiry against him.

Facebook said in a statement, "Any mention of the potential whistleblower's name violates our coordinating harm policy, which prohibits content 'outing of witness, informant, or activist. We are removing any and all mentions of the potential whistleblower's name and will revisit this decision should their name be widely published in the media or used by public figures in debate."

Facebook says it is removing "any and all mention of the potential whistleblower's name" from its platform. pic.twitter.com/yezibCohT7

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 8, 2019

Meanwhile, YouTube — which is owned by Google — told CNN it will follow Facebook's lead.

From CNN:

A YouTube spokesperson said videos mentioning the potential whistleblower's name would also be removed. The spokesperson said the company would use a combination of machine learning and human review to scrub the content. The removals, the spokesperson added, would affect the titles and descriptions of videos as well as the video's actual content.

Twitter, however, said that mentioning the name of the person believed to be the whistleblower is not a violation of its rules and tweets doing so would not be scrubbed from the platform.

The whistleblower is purported to be a career CIA analyst who worked on the National Security Council during the Obama administration and the initial months of the Trump administration. He is now purportedly working on the National Intelligence Council and reports directly to Director of National Intelligence Joe Maguire, the Washington Examiner reported.