After receiving a huge wave of criticism online, YouTube has announced that it will be reviewing its harassment policies.
YouTube is trudging through yet another controversy over its policies, this time in regards to how it handles harassment. After receiving a ton of blowback for its policies regarding hate speech, YouTube has said it will be reviewing its policies.
For a bit of background, Vox journalist Carlos Maza explained in a series of tweets that he had been the victim of several verbal attacks from conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder. Maza explained (with accompanying video clips from Crowder’s channel to prove his story) that Crowder had been launching verbal attacks against his sexuality and his race for some time on his channel, making fun of him for these things and using gay slurs. However, after bringing this to YouTube’s team, they informed Maza that they would neither remove Crowder’s videos or penalize him in any way.
YouTube’s official statement explained that, “opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.” Understandably, Maza shared this response on Twitter and several people spoke out against the website and their policies.
Happily, as Variety reports, YouTube decided to do something about Crowder’s channel after all, demonetizing his channel and removing it from the YouTube Partner Program. Should Crowder desire to be reconsidered for the program, he would have to remove all offensive videos from his channel.
Chris Dale, the head of YouTube communications explained the site’s change of heart in a blog post, saying, “In the case of Crowder’s channel, a thorough review over the weekend found that individually, the flagged videos did not violate our Community Guidelines. However, in the subsequent days, we saw the widespread harm to the YouTube community resulting from the ongoing pattern of egregious behavior, took a deeper look, and made the decision to suspend monetization.”
Dale also explained that, over the next few months, YouTube will be working with “experts, creators, journalists and those who have, themselves, been victims of harassment” to update their policies. “We are determined to evolve our policies,” Dale explained, “and continue to hold our creators and ourselves to a higher standard.”
While it’s great to hear that Crowder did receive consequences for using slurs and making racist comments and that YouTube is working to make changes, it’s still frustrating that YouTube seems hesitant to dole out real consequences for its high-profile users. Beyond that, YouTube has definitely used Pride Month as a marketing opportunity, so many have found their hesitance to punish a high-profile YouTuber using gay slurs while also releasing marketing packages celebrating pride frustrating and hypocritical.
This is another in a long list of controversies and struggles that YouTube has faced while balancing its desire to be an open platform for all performers to put their content while also making it a safe platform for users. Still, YouTube has been pretty slow to implement and follow policies to ban dangerous content–it was only Wednesday that the service decided to ban Neo-Nazi and white supremacist content.
Time will tell in regards to how YouTube continues to regulate (or not regulate) content on the site. In the meantime, we will have to see if users decide to stick with YouTube, or if they decide the website isn’t a safe place for their content.
Source: Variety
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