YouTube announced new policies yesterday which ban video creators from making direct and implied threats and forbidding racist and homophobic attacks against public and private individuals, including other video creators, politicians, and celebrities.
People are, understandably, sceptical though how serious YouTube is and how well these measures will work even if they are enforced. YouTube has an abysmal track record when it comes to discouraging fascists and homophobes from using their platform to spread their messages.
The new policies come six months after gay journalist Carlos Maza publicly criticized YouTube for allowing a right-wing vlogger to make repeated, overt attacks on Maza’s sexual orientation and ethnicity, inspiring the vloggers audience to target Maza for similar harassment on several social media platforms.
In addition to banning racist and anti-queer attacks, YouTube’s new policies will ban implied threats (such as a person holding a knife while addressing someone or putting a person’s face on a victim of violence), harassment campaigns that repeatedly target individuals over several videos, and will give video creators better tools for moderating hateful comments on their videos.
In response, Maza said via Twitter, “YouTube loves to manage PR crises by rolling out vague content policies they don’t actually enforce. These policies only work if YouTube is willing to take down its most popular rule-breakers. And there’s no reason, so far, to believe that it is.”
He added that YouTube already has an unenforced policy banning “malicious speech” and that demonetising creators breaking the rules doesn’t work because they “make money through merch sales and direct donations, not AdSense. As long as YouTube gives them a free platform to find new customers, they’ll keep breaking the rules.”