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> 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> YouTube said Wednesday that it is launching a new campaign to rid its site of extremist political and personal videos, such as those promoting white supremacy and neo-Nazism, as the video publishing platform seeks to crack down on hate speech.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, laid out the guidelines of its latest crackdown in a company blog post. No specific video producers or channels were named, but YouTube said that “videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology” would be targeted under the new policies.

“(We are) 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,” YouTube said in announcing its latest effort to police content on its site. The company added that it would also begin removing videos that deny that violent events like the Holocaust and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

YouTube said it would begin enforcing the new video policies on Wednesday, but the size of the issue means that “it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we’ll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months.”
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• What Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are doing with the fake Nancy Pelosi videos The size of YouTube speaks to the scale of the task at hand for the company. Approximately 1.3 billion people around the globe use YouTube, and more than 5 billion videos are watched on the site each day. It’s also estimated that 300 to 500 new videos are uploaded onto YouTube every minute.

YouTube’s latest move against hate speech comes one day after the company determined that videos posted by conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder, in which he used racial and homophobic language to described Vox writer Carlos Maza, didn’t violate YouTube’s policy usage terms. A report this week from the New York Times also described the proliferation of home videos that include images of children in swimsuits as a “buffet” for pedophiles. </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> Getty

YouTube on Wednesday said it's removing videos that push extremist views like white supremacy or deny events like the Holocaust or Sandy Hook shooting. The new policy is an attempt to crack down on hate speech on the Google-owned video service.

The new rules prohibit any video "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."

YouTube didn't specifically say which channels or videos it's removing. The company has drawn criticism for how it enforces its policies and its decision-making process when it comes to leaving up videos that some deem hateful.

The update follows a controversy Tuesday evening, when YouTube refused to take down the channel of a prominent conservative personality named Stephen Crowder for using homophobic slurs against journalist Carlos Maza, a writer and video host at Vox. Maza, who is gay, created a supercut of Crowder calling him a "lispy sprite" and "little queer."

YouTube said Crowder's videos didn't violate the site's rules. "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," the company said in a series of tweets Tuesday night. "Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don't violate our policies, they'll remain on our site."

(2/4) 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: — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019

YouTube also said Wednesday it would remove channels that "brush up" against its hate speech rules -- but don't necessarily break them -- from its YouTube Partner Program, which lets creators run ads on their channel and use other monetization features. For other "borderline" content, YouTube said it would reduce the reach of the video and surround it by more authoritative content, like putting a video on the topic from a trusted news source in the "Watch next" panel.

YouTube hasn't banned Crowder's channel, but later Wednesday said it would suspend its monetization.

"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 tweeted. However, the company said in a follow-up tweet that Crowder would be able to monetize his channel again if he addressed certain issues, including removing a link from the video selling his T-shirts and merchandise.

YouTube didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about what else would need to be fixed.

The new hate speech policy also comes as platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter face intense scrutiny for their ability to police the content on their platforms. Facebook in March announced it was banning white nationalist and separatist content. But it has also faced blowback for its decision to leave up a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that had been doctored to make her appear drunk. (YouTube decided the video was inappropriate and removed it from its service.)

YouTube also said it has partnered with lawmakers and other organizations to help combat the spread of extremism on its service. On Wednesday, one of those partners, the Anti-Defamation League, applauded the new policy by YouTube but called on the company to do more.

"We were glad to share our expertise on this and look forward to continuing to provide input," Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL's CEO and national director, said in a statement. "While this is an important step forward, this move alone is insufficient and must be followed by many more changes from YouTube and other tech companies to adequately counter the scourge of online hate and extremism."

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Originally published June 5, 9:54 a.m. PT.

Update, 12:03 p.m. PT: Adds news that YouTube suspended monetization of Crowder's channel; 1 p.m. PT and 2:06 p.m. PT: Adds YouTube's followup statements about Crowder's demonetization. </s> Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

YouTube said Wednesday that the platform will begin banning videos promoting Nazi ideology as well as those denying “well-documented violent events” such as the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook massacre.

"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 company wrote in a blog post.

The company noted that “it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up."

The video platform has been under pressure from experts and watchdog groups for years to address its role in hosting and spreading hateful content, as researchers showed that its algorithm tended to drag users from mainstream videos toward extremist political content through the use of its autoplay feature and recommendation system.

YouTube said its new policy would aim to “prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence.”

YouTube will also begin to change the videos it recommends alongside "borderline content" that does not violate the company's policies.

"In January, we piloted an update of our systems in the U.S. to limit recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, or claiming the earth is flat," the company wrote. "We’re looking to bring this updated system to more countries by the end of 2019."

YouTube will also include videos from "authoritative sources" alongside borderline videos.

The video-sharing platform has been criticized by researchers who argued that the company wasn’t simply hosting the videos but also leading users down “rabbit holes” toward increasingly violent and extreme viewpoints while shutting out dissent.

Jonas Kaiser, an assistant researcher at Harvard University, and Adrian Rauchfleisch, an assistant professor at the National Taiwan University, outlined the phenomenon last year in a research paper titled “Unite the Right? How YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm Connects The U.S. Far-Right.”

“In much the same way that the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, where a white supremacist injured many and killed Heather Heyer by driving a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, sought to bring together many far-right influencers, so too does YouTube’s recommendation algorithm bring together far-right channels,” Kaiser and Rauchfleisch wrote.

YouTube said it would also work to hone its algorithm to stop directing users toward silos of extremist content.

“If a user is watching a video that comes close to violating our policies, our systems may include more videos from authoritative sources (like top news channels) in the ‘watch next’ panel,” Shadloo wrote.

YouTube also said it will strengthen its enforcement of its rules around which channels can monetize their videos.

"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 like Super Chat," YouTube wrote.

YouTube’s changes add to similar moves by other platforms that have begun to rewrite policies around hate speech. In March, Facebook announced a ban on “praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism on Facebook and Instagram.”

Twitter does not have a similar policy against white nationalism, but it does ban targeted harassment based on race.

YouTube’s announcement comes just hours after the company said that it would not take action against far-right YouTube personality Steven Crowder, who has published numerous videos targeting Vox reporter Carlos Maza with anti-gay and anti-Mexican slurs over several years.

Despite rules on the service that prohibit “racial, ethnic, religious, or other slurs where the primary purpose is to promote hatred” and “stereotypes that incite or promote hatred,” YouTube declined to take action on the videos created by Crowder, whose videos have received more than 833 million total views on YouTube.

“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,” a YouTube spokesperson tweeted to Maza on Tuesday night.

Shortly after Wednesday's initial announcement, YouTube tweeted that it had suspended monetization on Crowder's channel.

Becca Lewis, a researcher at Data & Society, a nonprofit based in New York, and author of Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube about networks of far-right influencers on YouTube, called the move “a step in the right direction” toward eliminating hate speech on the platform but was ultimately skeptical.

“It remains to be seen exactly how it will be enforced. And it's particularly strange to see this coming out right after such a public case of them interpreting their policies in favor of keeping harassment up on their platform,” Lewis said.

Both Lewis and Megan Squire, an Elon University computer science professor who studies the far right, said they see the new policies are an acknowledgement of years of academic research that showed ties between YouTube’s algorithm and domestic extremism.

“This ban is certainly an admission that they have had and continue to have extremist and hateful content on their platform,” Squire said. </s> 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 said Wednesday that it is launching a new campaign to rid its site of extremist political and personal videos, such as those promoting white supremacy and neo-Nazism, as the video publishing platform seeks to crack down on hate speech.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, laid out the guidelines of its latest crackdown in a company blog post. No specific video producers or channels were named, but YouTube said that “videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology” would be targeted under the new policies.

“(We are) 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,” YouTube said in announcing its latest effort to police content on its site. The company added that it would also begin removing videos that deny that violent events like the Holocaust and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

YouTube said it would begin enforcing the new video policies on Wednesday, but the size of the issue means that “it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we’ll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months.”
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• An effort to make dam electricity count as renewable energy just failed The size of YouTube speaks to the scale of the task at hand for the company. Approximately 1.3 billion people around the globe use YouTube, and more than 5 billion videos are watched on the site each day. It’s also estimated that 300 to 500 new videos are uploaded onto YouTube every minute.

YouTube’s latest move against hate speech comes one day after the company determined that videos posted by conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder, in which he used racial and homophobic language to described Vox writer Carlos Maza, didn’t violate YouTube’s policy usage terms. A report this week from the New York Times also described the proliferation of home videos that include images of children in swimsuits as a “buffet” for pedophiles. </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.
YouTube announces a new policy regarding hate speech and harassment on the video sharing platform, saying it will specifically ban videos that include neo-nazi and supremacist content, subsequently suspending several popular right-wing channels, and demonetizing Steven Crowder's.