However, countless users pointed out that YouTube’s own defence of its decision not to ban Crowder (claiming it “found language that was clearly hurtful”) actually confirmed that he should fall foul of the old guidelines (which prohibit “content that makes hurtful and negative personal comments”). “Those vagaries, in turn, get strategically exploited by those spreading harassment and hate speech.” “YouTube's policies, as they are currently written, are strategically vague in a way that gives them a lot of leeway in situations like that,” explains Becca Lewis of Stanford University, who has researched the alt-right’s use of YouTube. Partly it came to its initial decision because in no video does Crowder tell his viewers to harass Maza. It claims that the main point of these videos was not to harass, threaten, or incite hate, but rather to respond to opinions Maza, a video journalist, aired in his own videos. The messy way it handled Crowder shows it doesn't have an easy fix.įirst: YouTube said that Crowder’s videos about Maza do not fall under the revised policies. Both actions reduced the number of views to such videos by an average of 80 per cent, the site says.Ĭhasing down and removing conspiracy theory videos might work – but YouTube’s new hate speech policy seems unlikely to really move anything. The decision is an extension of action taken in 2017 to limit the amount of time supremacist content was surfaced through the site’s recommendation algorithms, and a similar move, in January 2019, to throttle the number of conspiracy theory videos the algorithm recommended.
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