The independent BitChute video streaming platform was taken offline by its hosting service this morning, leaving behind no content other than an ominous "Error 525" message.
While BitChute access appears to have been restored as of this writing, at least partially, users earlier in the day were unable to find any of the independent content that used to be there, and very little is known at this point about what happened.
Interestingly, BitChute has long branded itself as avoiding the types of corporate web hosting platforms that engage in what some are speculating to be a form of political censorship. So was this all just a fluke?
"It looks like we've been deplatformed on some critical infrastructure that has taken the site offline," BitChute announced in a tweet early in the day on Nov. 3.
"We're trying to speak to people and find out more before saying more than that. So far we have received some very general account termination emails."
Several hours after tweeting this, BitChute announced in another tweet that its service was back up, but with a few caveats.
"We've got the service back up, there's some issues as a result of this we will need to deal with. If you notice glitches please be patient."
"We're waiting to have a call with the service provider I mentioned above rather than speculate here."
Twitter blocked BitChute video links back in August
As we reported back in August, BitChute was already under attack by one of the big boys, Twitter, which banned both BitChute and Brighteon videos from being shared on the platform.
BitChute still has an account on Twitter, just to be clear. The problem is that new BitChute videos are blocked from being shared by Twitter users, preventing them from gaining the widespread reach they otherwise would.
"So far, the blocking only seems to prevent new Bitchute and Brighteon videos from being shared," wrote our own Franz Walker.
"Any existing tweets with links to alternative video sites still have their links working correctly. However, clicking on those links still brings up a warning from Twitter, claiming that the links are unsafe."
It would hardly be a surprise to learn that whatever hosting platform BitChute uses decided to take it down on what is perhaps the most important day in 2020 – a day when the fate of the next four years and beyond for our country hangs in the balance.
Election Day was an important day for BitChute to be up and running, seeing as how YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the other tech giants have been actively censoring content that favors President Trump while propping up the Joe Biden campaign.
BitChute is also a platform where Huntergate bombshells are free to land, even as they remain banned almost everywhere else. Perhaps this is why the platform went down just in time for the election.
At least one Twitter user speculated that perhaps activist employees were responsible for the shutdown. Others joked that surely it was all just one big coincidence that BitChute content disappeared during the key daylight hours when people were headed to the polls.
"Could the powers that be make it any more obvious these days?" one user wrote. "I'm only shocked they bothered trying to cover it up."
"You don't have your own infrastructure?" asked another, making an interesting point. "Should have probably informed the users about this, before they spent thousands of hours building up your platform."
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