In the wake of the Steven Crowder scandal, YouTube said it would reconsider its harassment policies.
Topline: After an inconsistent and confusing response to a public callout of homophobic harassment by right-wing YouTuber Steven Crowder, YouTube has created a firestorm across the political spectrum.
- Vox journalist Carlos Maza last week called out YouTuber Steven Crowder, who frequently rails against “social justice warriors,” for harassment using homophobic slurs, such as “Mr. lispy queer from Vox,” “angry little queer” and “gay Mexican.”
- While the company said Crowder wasn’t in violation of its policies, YouTube demonetized his channel, meaning that he can’t make money from advertising anymore. The decision wasn’t satisfactory for LGBT creators, who say that YouTube allows undue homophobic and transphobic harassment.
- A day later, YouTube made a policy change that takes a tougher stance against hate speech and Holocaust denialism. In applying the new rules, several other channels and videos were demonetized or banned.
- In the process, YouTube also removed videos and channels that show neo-Nazi imagery in an effort to study or debunk it.
- The combination of Crowder’s highly public demonetization and other far-right channels being demonetized made Crowder deem the situation the #VoxAdpocalypse, which he says is a coordinated media campaign led by Maza meant to “silence independent creators.”
Google, which owns YouTube, did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes about legitimate accounts or videos that were demonetized or about why Crowder was not in violation of its policies. In blog post Thursday, YouTube said it would reconsider its harassment policies.
LGBTQ Creators Say Harassment Is A Larger Issue Than Crowder
Maza’s case against Crowder is just the latest example of YouTube’s failure to curb abuse, LGBTQ creators say. By explicitly admitting that Crowder didn’t violate the platform’s policies, LGBTQ YouTubers don’t feel welcome.
“If homophobia and racism don’t violate your policies... then what? Why am I on your platform?! what do I do now?” tweeted Dodie Clark, a musician and YouTuber.
LGBTQ creators say they regularly face homophobic and transphobic harassment, in the form of YouTube comments or reaction videos from other YouTubers who mock and bully them.
“This is a much larger and systemic problem that’s not going to be fixed by demonetizing one channel or getting rid of more white supremacist videos,” Lindsay Amer, the creator of the YouTube channel Queer Kid Stuff, told Forbes.
Amer, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, decided to disable comments on their videos after blocking more than 10 different spellings of the word “pedophile” in the comments section.
A group of Google employees using the Twitter account “Googlers Against Hate” started a campaign, called #NoPrideInYT, to bring attention to what they say is YouTube’s hypocrisy in having a rainbow logo during pride month while letting Crowder stay on the platform.
“Despite YouTube capitalizing on Pride as a marketing campaign, it's clear they have no issue making policy decisions that harm LGBTQ people,” the account tweeted.
Crowder, Ted Cruz Say Censorship Is On The Horizon
After his channel was demonetized, Crowder took to Twitter in an uproar, saying that he and the others who were punished by YouTube were the targets of a vast campaign to silence “independent creators.” He has retweeted conservative commentators who lament him being punished for “saying mean things” or having opinions others disagree with.
He dubbed the entire episode the #VoxAdpocalyspe, which was the top trending topic on Twitter Wednesday night. Prominent right-wing figures, such as Ben Shapiro and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have come to his defense.
Conservatives have for years criticized social media companies for what they say is censoring conservative viewpoints, and some cited the demonetization of Crowder as the latest salvo. Left-leaning Silicon Valley has been particularly sensitive to appearing biased, muddying efforts by companies including Facebook and Twitter to stop hate speech.
YouTube is a private company and doesn’t have to abide by First Amendment rules that apply only to the government, but its reach is so large that First Amendment advocates say the platform has the responsibility to protect free speech.
Caught In The Middle
YouTube’s updated hate speech policy also got off to a rough start.
After YouTube rolled out its policy Wednesday, Ford Fischer, the founder of the channel News2Share, checked on the status of his videos. Fischer is an independent journalist who frequently films protests and licenses the footage to documentary filmmakers and news stations, including CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Two videos had been removed and his entire channel was demonetized. One video was shot at this year’s American Israel Public Affair Committee conference and included both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters shouting down a Holocaust denier. The other was the raw footage of a speech given by neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich Enoch.
Fischer did not intend to promote Holocaust denialism or neo-Nazism, but says he was documenting it
“They claimed to have gone through the content that they affected, and frankly I find that hard to believe because nobody at YouTube ever reached out to me, and I think they would understand that my work is about building things for the sake of historical understanding and to provide critical analysis of the very content they were censoring,” Fischer told Forbes.
Crowder picked up on Fischer’s experience and used it to bolster his claim of a media conspiracy. Ben Shapiro retweeted Fischer too. Maza tweeted that Fischer’s channel shouldn’t have been demonetized, and so did the Atlanta chapter of the Antifascist movement.
“When you have both Ben Shapiro and literally Antifa agreeing that YouTube made a mistake, in my view this is apolitical,” Fischer said.
Other videos and channels that don’t promote white supremacy were demonetized or banned. Mr. Allsop History, a channel created by a history teacher, was taken down for having raw footage of Nazi propaganda (YouTube has since restored his channel). Channels with the sole purpose of debunking Holocaust deniers were banned too.
YouTube has said that its content moderation process involves a combination of automation and human review, a necessity considering the sheer volume of content uploaded on the platform.
Google did not respond to a request for comment, so it’s unclear if these channels were reviewed by a human or not.
