June 5 (UPI) -- YouTube announced Wednesday new efforts to limit discriminatory and phony content by removing more extremist channels and rewarding more trusted creators.

The platform said it is furthering its crackdown on "harmful" and "violent extremist" content through a number of new policy changes after consulting with experts in extremism, supremacism and free speech.

"The openness of YouTube's platform has helped creativity and access to information thrive," the company said in a blog post. "It's our responsibility to protect that, and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence."

In 2017, YouTube tried to limit views of supremacist content by not allowing the videos to be shared and curtailing comments and recommendations. On Wednesday, the company said it will ban any video that says any one group is better than another or suggests segregation based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.

YouTube said it also will ban content that denies well-documented historical events like the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Additionally, YouTube said it plans to curtail the spread of video content that "comes right up to the line" on its policies such as videos suggesting miracle cures or suggesting the Earth is flat. The company said it piloted a version of this change in January and found that the number of views the content gets from recommendations dropped by 50 percent under the new policy.

Such videos will also include recommendations from more authoritative content such as news channels.

YouTube already prevents monetary advertising on videos that include hate speech, but going forward, the company plans to suspend channels that "repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies."

YouTube said efforts in recent years to crack down on hate speech and other extremist content has led to an 80 percent drop in views on such videos.

In May 2016, the company, along with Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft, signed a code of conduct formulated by the European Union to help fight the spread of hate speech. </s> YouTube is removing thousands of channels for promoting Neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories that deny well-known historical events like the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook school shooting ever occurred.

On Wednesday, the Google-owned platform announced it was taking a stricter stance on hateful content by deleting the offending videos instead of just limiting their circulation.

YouTube's policy previously banned videos for using racial slurs to promote hate and dehumanizing people based on their ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. However, the platform stopped short of banning "supremacist content" and instead made the videos harder to find by denying them access to YouTube's recommendation algorithm and share functions.

The updated policy now prohibits content that alleges "the superiority of a group" over another to "justify violence, discrimination, segregation, or exclusion." Calling for the subjugation or domination of an individual or group is also no longer allowed.

The same policy tackles misinformation. It bans conspiracy theory videos that claim someone has "evil, corrupt or malicious intent." Denying that a "well-documented, violent event took place" has been banned as well.

"The openness of YouTube's platform has helped creativity and access to information thrive. It's our responsibility to protect that, and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence," YouTube said of the changes, which will start rolling out later today.

The crackdown will no doubt spark allegations of censorship from free speech advocates and conservatives. But others have accused YouTube of failing to fight hate speech. The platform made the announcement a day after it refrained from taking action on right-wing commenter Steven Crowder for hurling homophobic taunts at Vox reporter Carlos Maza.

"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," YouTube said in tweet thread to Maza, adding: "Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don't violate our policies, they'll remain on our site." (YouTube says it's now suspended monetization over Crowder's YouTube channel.)

Nevertheless, YouTube said in today's announcement it's going to take a tougher stance on "borderline" content that doesn't quite violate the platform's policies but comes close. In January, for instance, the platform began limiting recommendations of harmful misinformation, such as videos promoting miracle cures or the claim that the Earth is flat.

"Thanks to this change, the number of views this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 50 percent in the US," YouTube said. As a result, the video-sharing service is bringing the change globally across the platform.

"Our systems are also getting smarter about what types of videos should get this treatment, and we'll be able to apply it to even more borderline videos moving forward. As we do this, we'll also start raising up more authoritative content in recommendations," YouTube added. </s> After beginning the process of disabling comments on videos featuring young minors on its platform last week, YouTube have decided to extend the block to those with older minors, in an effort to curb predatory behaviour on its site.

Over the past week, YouTube said it suspended comments from tens of millions of videos that had posed risks to such behaviour. The extension, which will see children up to the age of 18 covered, will come into place over the next few months.

"A small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on these types of videos," YouTube said in a blog post. "These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behaviour."

See also: How to make YouTube Kids safer for your children (CNET)

YouTube said it would work with creators directly, with the goal of growing the number over time as it improves its ability to catch inappropriate comments.

The Alphabet-owned company is also launching a new comments classifier that will identify and remove predatory comments, with YouTube promising the detection and consequential removal of twice as many comments.

Additionally, YouTube said it intends to take action on creators who cause "egregious harm" to the community.

"No form of content that endangers minors is acceptable on YouTube, which is why we have terminated certain channels that attempt to endanger children in any way," the blog continued.

"Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges targeting any audience are also clearly against our policies. We will continue to take action when creators violate our policies in ways that blatantly harm the broader user and creator community."

YouTube has classified the following as harmful content: Sexualisation of minors, which includes sexually explicit content featuring minors and content that sexually exploits minors; harmful or dangerous acts involving minors, such as that showing a minor participating in dangerous activity, or encouraging minors to engage in dangerous activities; infliction of emotional distress on minors, including content that could cause participants or viewers distress; misleading family content, videos misleading viewers by appearing to be family content, but containing sexual themes, violence, obscene, or other mature themes not suitable for young audiences; and cyberbullying and harassment involving minors.

If content violates YouTube's policy, it will be removed and an email will be sent to the creator.

A warning for a first offence will be given, with no penalty. Once three strikes have been tallied, the channel will be terminated.

YouTube last week had already begun limiting the monetisation of videos that include minors, with those flagged as at risk receiving limited or no ads, and made known through the use of a yellow icon.

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Videos uploaded as private or unlisted are subject to being crawled, but Google's documentation does not acknowledge this behavior at all. </s> CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt’s top administrative court ruled on Saturday that regulators must block the video file-sharing site YouTube for one month over a video that denigrates the Prophet Mohammad, a lawyer who filed the case told Reuters.

A lower administrative court had ordered that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology block YouTube, owned by Google, in 2013 over the video, but the case was appealed and its ruling stayed during the appeal process.

The ministry at the time said it would be impossible to enforce the ruling without also disrupting Google’s Internet search engine, incurring potentially huge costs and job losses in the Arab world’s most populous country.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology was not immediately available for comment. YouTube appeared to be working in Egypt on Saturday as of 1250 GMT.

The film “Innocence of Muslims”, a low-budget 13-minute video, was billed as a film trailer and made in California with private funding. It provoked a wave of anti-American unrest in Egypt and other Muslim countries when it appeared in 2012.

Mohamed Hamid Salem, a lawyer who filed the case in 2013, said the ruling also orders that all links that broadcast the film be blocked.

The ruling is considered final and cannot be appealed. </s> YouTube may end up revising its anti-harassment policies amid an ongoing controversy involving a right-wing commentator who posted homophobic videos targeting a reporter.

"In the coming months, we will be taking a hard look at our harassment policies with an aim to update them," the Google-owned platform said in a blog post.

Two days ago, YouTube sparked online outrage from the LGBTQ community and journalists after it declined to suspend conservative commentator Steven Crowder's YouTube channel despite the fact that he repeatedly harassed Vox reporter Carlos Maza in his videos.

Maza has been urging YouTube to take action and enforce the platform's rules against online harassment. However, the video-sharing site said that "while we found language (in Crowder's channel) that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don't violate our policies."

Later, YouTube abruptly decided to suspend Crowder's ability to monetize videos on his channel—underscoring a seemingly arbitrary enforcement of the platform's rules. "Today has generated a lot of questions and confusion," YouTube admitted on Wednesday.

The controversy comes as YouTube has been struggling to balance fighting online abuse with maintaining free speech. In the past, it's tried to bury videos containing hate speech and racism by making them harder to find on the site. But on Tuesday, it decided to delete any videos promoting Neo-Nazism and racial supremacy, which will result in the takedown of thousands of channels.

In revising its anti-harassment policy, YouTube says it'll consult with experts, video creators, journalists, and victims of online harassment. But the platform also wants to protect free speech even when the content may be offensive, pointing to politically charged rants and edgy stand-up comedy routines as examples.

Cynics may roll their eyes at this. After all, YouTube generates millions in advertising dollars. Crowder himself has more than 3.8 million subscribers. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is considering action against Silicon Valley companies it believes has been unfairly censorsing political conservatives.

However, YouTube says: "We enforce our policies here rigorously and regardless of the creator in question." The platform indicated that the videos from Crowder weren't banned because the content itself was addressing a larger topic and not simply focused on demeaning Maza.

"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," the platform said. "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."

Still, no matter what YouTube does to revise its anti-harassment policy, it'll probably outrage someone. "Not everyone will agree with the calls we make—some will say we haven't done enough; others will say we've gone too far," it said in the blog post. </s> CAIRO, Egypt – Egypt's top administrative court ordered authorities on Saturday, May 26, to block video-sharing website YouTube in the country for a month, after a years-long appeals process over a film denigrating Islam's Prophet Mohammed, a judicial official said.

A lower court had ordered the video sharing site be blocked in 2013 after it carried the video "Innocence of Muslims", but the case was appealed by Egypt's National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and its ruling was stayed.

The 2012 amateurish film depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a buffoon and a paedophile, and sparked a wave of angry anti-American protests across the Middle East in which more than 30 people were killed.

Washington sought to keep a lid on the demonstrations by saying the controversial film was made privately with no official backing.

US officials said freedom of speech laws prevented them from stopping the production of inflammatory material.

The ruling is considered final and cannot be appealed.

As of Saturday afternoon, YouTube was still accessible in Cairo. – Rappler.com </s> 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.

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 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 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 would not be affected by the latest ban. </s> YouTube announced on 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.

[WASHINGTON] YouTube announced on 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 Centre, 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 organising 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."

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 monetisation.

"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 monetisation 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, Mr Crowder's channel was still operational.

But YouTube said later on Twitter it had suspended monetisation of Mr 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 Programme 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 demonetise all the rap videos with homophobic slurs on their platform?" he said on Twitter. </s> Google-owned video platform YouTube has disabled the comments on “tens of millions of videos” featuring minors, in an attempt to curb sexual predators on the platform.

In a blog post, which was shared by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, YouTube announced the steps it had taken “to protect young people on YouTube,” and “improve child safety.”

“Over the past week, we disabled comments from tens of millions of videos that could be subject to predatory behavior. These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months,” YouTube declared. “Over the next few months, we will be broadening this action to suspend comments on videos featuring young minors and videos featuring older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior.”

“A small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on these types of videos. These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior,” the company continued. “We will work with them directly and our goal is to grow this number over time as our ability to catch violative comments continues to improve.”

YouTube also claimed to have “been working on an even more effective classifier, that will identify and remove predatory comments.”

“No form of content that endangers minors is acceptable on YouTube, which is why we have terminated certain channels that attempt to endanger children in any way. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges targeting any audience are also clearly against our policies,” YouTube concluded. “We will continue to take action when creators violate our policies in ways that blatantly harm the broader user and creator community. Please continue to flag these to us.”

Last week, YouTube faced heavy criticism from content creators after it claimed that “inappropriate comments” left by other users on videos could result in the video becoming demonetized.

Content creators pointed out to YouTube that they could have their income taken away if trolls, or critics, decided to purposefully leave “inappropriate” comments on their videos.

YouTube launched its comments system changes following reports of many sexual predators on the platform, who were found to be making sexual comments on videos featuring children.

The reports of YouTube’s pedophile problem led to several major advertisers pulling their ads, including McDonald’s, Nestlé, and Epic Games, and forced YouTube to take action.
YouTube announces that YouTubers who make "egregious" content will be punished. Critics of the move call it censorship.