YouTube to ban 'hateful,''supremacist' videos
YouTube to ban 'hateful,''supremacist' videos
Rob Lever AFP • June 5, 2019
Washington (AFP) - YouTube announced Wednesday it would
ban videos promoting or glorifying racism and discrimination as well as those
denying well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook
elementary school shooting.
The announcement by the Google-owned video-sharing
platform was the latest of a series of tech industry moves to filter out
hateful and violent content, which have spurred calls for tougher regulation.
"YouTube has always had rules of the road, including
a longstanding policy against hate speech," a company statement said.
"Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech
policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in
order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities
like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran
status."
The move comes after a call by world leaders in Paris
last month to curb extremism online, following revelations about the
livestreaming of a mosque massacre in New Zealand.
"We will begin enforcing this updated policy today;
however, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we'll be
gradually expanding coverage over the next several months," YouTube said.
YouTube and other platforms have also been seen as havens
for conspiracy theorists denying Holocaust or the September 11 attacks, and for
Nazi and white supremacist groups.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white
supremacists and other extremist groups, said the ban will be positive only if
YouTube enforces it.
"As with other outlets before it, YouTube's decision
to remove hateful content depends on its ability to enact and enforce policies
and procedures that will prevent this content from becoming a global organizing
tool for the radical right," said the group's intelligence director Heidi
Beirich.
"Tech companies must proactively tackle the problem
of hateful content that is easily found on their platforms before it leads to
more hate-inspired violence."
- Tougher measures -
In January, YouTube said it would stop recommending
specious videos such as those claiming the earth is flat or promoting bogus
theories about the September 11, 2001 terror attacks or the 2012 killings at
the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. But it stopped short of
banning that content.
YouTube said it would seek ways to keep some of the
violent content to make it available to researchers.
But the latest move is likely to eliminate numerous
"channels" that use the platform for monetization.
"We have longstanding advertiser-friendly guidelines
that prohibit ads from running on videos that include hateful content and we
enforce these rigorously," the statement said.
"Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate
speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning
they can't run ads on their channel or use other monetization features."
Earlier this year, Facebook announced it would ban praise
or support for white nationalism and white separatism as part of a stepped-up
crackdown on hate speech.
The moves by social media have prompted criticism among
right-wing activists in the United States, and President Donald Trump has
claimed that online platforms are seeking to suppress conservative voices.
YouTube did not disclose the names of any groups or
channels that may be banned.
The YouTube move comes after a report in the tech news
website The Verge documenting harassment of a journalist based on his race and
sexual orientation by right-wing commentator Steven Crowder.
According to The Verge, Crowder's channel was still
operational.
But YouTube said later on Twitter it had suspended
monetization of Crowder's channel, barring him from getting YouTube ad
revenues.
"We came to this decision because a pattern of
egregious actions has harmed the broader community and is against our YouTube
Partner Program policies," the company said.
Andrew Surabian, a Republican strategist and former White
House aide, said the move suggests YouTube has caved in to pressure from
activists.
"If that's their new standard, will they now
demonetize all the rap videos with homophobic slurs on their platform?" he
said on Twitter.
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