YouTube Bans White Supremacists, 9/11 And Sandy Hook Truthers, Holocaust Deniers, Other Extremists

Vox reports:

YouTube is finally banning content that promotes white supremacist views on its video platform. But it will still permit videos it classifies as “borderline,” which isn’t clearly defined, as well as a host of other problematic content.

The Google-owned platform said on Wednesday that it’s updating its hate speech policy to prohibit “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 company specifically said this new policy would ban videos that promote Nazi ideology. It’s also axing content that denies well-documented violent events, such as the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The Verge reports:

The changes announced on Wednesday attempt to improve its content moderation in three ways. First, the ban on supremacists will remove Nazis and other extremists who advocate segregation or exclusion based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

In addition to those categories, YouTube is adding caste, which has significant implications in India, and “well-documented violent events,” such as the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and 9/11. Users are no longer allowed to post videos saying those events did not happen, YouTube said.

Second, YouTube said it would expand efforts announced in January to reduce the spread of what it calls “borderline content and harmful misinformation.” The policy, which applies to videos that flirt with violating the community guidelines but ultimately fall short, aims to limit the promotion of those videos through recommendations.

Vice News reports:

These changes come after YouTube faced immense scrutiny over the treatment of Vox journalist Carlos Maza by Steven Crowder, a right-wing YouTuber.

Last week, Maza posted on Twitter that for over two years he has been receiving harassment from Crowder in which the YouTuber called him “an angry little queer,” “gay Mexican,” “gay Latino from Vox” among other things. Crowder would also routinely use a voice mocking the homosexual community when impersonating Maza.

The New York Times reports:



The kind of content that will be prohibited under YouTube’s new hate speech policies include videos that claim Jews secretly control the world, those that say women are intellectually inferior to men and therefore should be denied certain rights, or that suggest that the white race is superior to another race, a YouTube spokesman said.

Channels that post some hateful content, but that do not violate YouTube’s rules with the majority of their videos, may receive strikes under YouTube’s three-strike enforcement system, but would not be immediately banned.

The company also said that channels that “repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies,” but don’t violate them outright, would be removed from YouTube’s advertising program, which allows channel owners to share in the advertising revenue their videos generate.