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YouTube Doesn't Care About Gay People

By Mike Redmond | Politics | June 5, 2019 |

By Mike Redmond | Politics | June 5, 2019 |

youtube-pride.jpg

Over the weekend, Vox writer Carlos Maza justifiably reached a breaking point after years of being harassed by “comedian” Steven Crowder and his “Louder With Crowder” YouTube videos. In a lengthy Twitter thread complete with video evidence and screencaps, Maza laid out how his life becomes a nightmare every time Crowder makes a video calling Maza “an anchor baby, a lispy queer, a Mexican, etc,” which results in conservative trolls doxxing him and spamming his phone with hundreds of text messages that read “debate steven crowder.” It’s a sh*t show, and Maza had enough as any goddamn reasonable person would. But instead of going after Crowder, Maza stuck it straight to the platform that directly profits from bad actors spewing hate speech.

Via Twitter:

This has been going on for years, and I’ve tried to flag this shit on several occasions. But YouTube is never going to actually enforce its policies. Because Crowder has 3 million YouTube subscribers, and enforcing their rules would get them accused on anti-conservative bias.

Which is all to say: I work my fucking ass off to create smart, thorough, engaging content for @YouTube, a company that claims to give a shit about LGBT creators. And its miserable to have that same company helping facilitate a truly mind melting amount of direct harassment.

My family sees this shit. I’ve had to explain to my much younger sister what the fuck a Steven Crowder is, and ask my siblings not to respond. Its exhausting. I wish @YouTube gave enough of a shit to stop its platform from becoming a fucking playground for assholes.

This isn’t about “silencing conservatives.” I don’t give a flying fuck if conservatives on YouTube disagree with me. But by refusing to enforce its anti-harassment policy, YouTube is helping incredibly powerful cyberbullies organize and target people they disagree with.

Anyway, if you want to help, I guess you can go to this dude’s videos and flag them? But @YouTube isn’t going to do anything, because YouTube does not give a fuck about queer creators. It cares about “engagement,” and homophobic/racist harassment is VERY “engaging.”

Maza knew full well that this campaign would expose him to even more homophobic attacks — which it did — but in the process, maybe, just maybe he’d generate enough publicity to force YouTube to do something. You see, while all of this was happening, YouTube found itself embroiled in yet another investigation where its algorithm was allegedly serving up children to pedophiles. If that sounds frighteningly familiar, back in February, the platform was in some shit after a user-generated pedophile ring was discovered hiding in plain sight followed by news that suicide instructions were appearing in YouTube Kids videos. So if you’re about to let your child have unfettered access to YouTube all summer vacation, uh, maybe don’t?

With another pedophile controversy in the mix and Maza exposing the company’s hypocritical support for Pride Month while riding high on engagement from noted homophobes, you’d assume that it’d behoove YouTube to do the right thing in regard to Crowder.

Nope! Here’s YouTube’s response to Maza, and I hope you like bullshit.

Thanks again for taking the time to share all of this information with us. We take allegations of harassment very seriously-we know this is important and impacts a lot of people.

Our teams spent the last few days conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us, and while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies. We’ve included more info below to explain this decision:

As an open platform, it’s crucial for us to allow everyone-from creators to journalists to late-night TV hosts-to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies. Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.

Even if a video remains on our site, it doesn’t mean we endorse/support that viewpoint.

There are other aspects of the channel that we’re still evaluating- we’ll be in touch with any further updates.

Obviously, YouTube’s mealy-mouthed response went over like a goddamn lead balloon. More importantly, it didn’t take long for The Verge, Gizmodo, Vice News, and The Washington Post to note that if you actually look at YouTube’s policies, Crowder’s videos sure as shit violate them.

Via WaPo:

YouTube’s policy explicitly forbids hate speech, which it defines as “content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups” based on things such as race, sexuality, nationality and immigration status.

Using stereotypes that incite or promote hatred are also prohibited. The company also prohibits “behavior intended to maliciously harass, threaten, or bully others,” including content that “is deliberately posted in order to humiliate someone” or that “makes hurtful and negative personal comments/videos about another person.”

After Maza retweeted YouTube’s horseshit response, it didn’t take long for anyone with a brain to call out YouTube for its rank hypocrisy and blatant click-lust.

However, the fierce reactions on Twitter (below) clearly scared the shit out of YouTube, because by Wednesday morning, the company suddenly became very concerned with hate speech.

While it sounds like YouTube is saying all of the right things to the New York Times, the most generous reading of this PR maneuver is “Hey, look at us, we’re banning Nazis! (But also quietly raking in engagement with homophobic content that we’re not going to remove if the subs are insane. I mean, c’mon.)” Nice try.

Twitter Reactions to YouTube Defending Steven Crowder