YouTube Announces Hate Speech Ban While Turning a Blind Eye to Homophobia

The platform trumpets new policies after coming under criticism for allowing attacks on a gay journalist.

Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

YouTube announced on Wednesday plans to ban videos expressing support for hateful ideologies like white supremacy and Nazism, just one day after it declined to take action against a popular YouTuber who has repeatedly lobbed homophobic slurs against Vox journalist Carlos Maza.

The video streaming platform wrote in a post that it would no longer allow “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion” on the basis of things like age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. YouTube also wrote that it would ban videos “denying that well-documented violent events,” like the Sandy Hook shooting and Holocaust, took place.

The company’s moves have long been sought by people frustrated with how YouTube has become a vehicle for harassment and demeaning of marginalized groups, and those who have warned that the platform’s algorithmic video recommendations of hate content have radicalized viewers into hateful ideologies.

But the company’s announcement came just one day after YouTube had fallen under criticism for saying that it would not take any enforcement action against right-wing YouTube host Steven Crowder after a tweet compiling instances Crowder’s homophobic disparagement of Maza went viral. In several videos over the course of the last two years, Crowder mocked Vox‘s Maza, derisively calling him a “gay Mexican” and a “lispy queer.” Maza says such remarks often resulted in Crowder’s followers harassing him online.

YouTube acknowledged that the videos were “clearly hurtful” but said that they did not violate their terms of service, despite the company’s terms of service saying that “hurtful” content violates its harassment and cyberbullying policy.

Maza criticized the site’s Wednesday announcement, tweeting “YouTube’s new anti-supremacy policy is a joke, a shiny prop meant to distract reporters and advertisers from the reality, which is that @YouTube doesn’t actually enforce any of these documents.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate