YouTube Begins Blocking Videos from Extremist Anwar al-Awlaki

Under growing pressure from governments and counterterrorism advocates, YouTube has drastically reduced its video archive of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American cleric who remains the leading English-language jihadist recruiter on the Internet six years after he was killed by a United States drone strike. Using video fingerprinting technology, YouTube now flags his videos automatically and human reviewers block most of them before anyone sees them, company officials say.