The entire content on the YouTube channel of Mojo Story, a digital news organisation run by journalist Barkha Dutt, has been “all deleted by hackers”, Dutt said in a tweet on Monday.
Meanwhile, stand-up comedian and YouTuber Tanmay Bhat also said that his YouTube and gmail accounts have been hacked, breaching two-factor authentication.
While the Mojo Story’s YouTube page said, “This channel doesn't have any content”, Tanmay Bhat's channel still had 473 videos. Both the accounts featured US automotive company Tesla's picture, and Bhat's channel even live streamed the company's event.
Mojo Story’s content was wiped off despite “hours of urging YouTube to act” and being assured that “action is being taken”, Dutt said. “This could have been stopped… now, it’s gone.”
The founder-editor of Mojo Story had reportedly urged YouTube many times since yesterday to “freeze the platform so that the hackers could not alter it.” To which, she said, officials of the video sharing platform told her that the “process of investigation has to be followed”.
Mojo Story had 11,000 videos on YouTube, put up over four years, including three years of reportage on Covid-19 pandemic in India. “Four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears… all gone. I am heartbroken,” Dutt said in the tweet. “I feel someone took a knife through my heart is all I can say.”
Following the incident, Twitter witnessed an outpour of anger and disappointment by journalists, politicians, lawyers and viewers of Mojo Story. Many of them urged YouTube to “rectify this” and “restore the channel”.
YouTube, all u were asked to do yesterday was to freeze the channel so no one could tamper with it & delete everything… like when you lose a credit card and the bank freezes it. That’s what you had to do. @YouTube @GoogleIndia There are more horror stories from u guys. Not good
— Derek O'Brien | ডেরেক ও'ব্রায়েন (@derekobrienmp) June 5, 2023
This is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a digital platform. I hope @YouTubeIndia @TeamYouTube is able to do everything it can to retrieve the videos. Sorry this happened @BDUTT. It's terrible.
— Anusha Ravi Sood (@anusharavi10) June 5, 2023
Sorry to hear this Barkha.. Hope @YouTube rectifies this.
— Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) June 5, 2023
This is unacceptable. YouTube I'm sure has a way to restore the channel contents.
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) June 5, 2023
Barkha, if it is still hacked, YouTube should be able to restore the Videos along with the View Counts etc and hand over the channel to you.
— Joy (@Joydas) June 5, 2023
This is terrible!
— Faye DSouza (@fayedsouza) June 5, 2023
So sorry to hear Barkha. Please let us know if any of us can help in any way.
— Menaka Guruswamy (@MenakaGuruswamy) June 5, 2023
Founded in 2019, the website of Mojo Story describes itself as a “feisty team of independent broadcast journalists”.
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