YouTube's Harassment Policy - Decoded

Let’s go over YouTube’s laughable damage-control-styled official blog post entitled: Taking a harder look at harassment – a post delivered after notable unwarranted damage had been done to members of the YouTube community (who, in fact, have not violated YouTube’s terms and conditions) People have become victims of YouTube’s economic terrorism…people who’s livelihoods have been taken away as a tidal wave of censorship rips through the internet at the behest of Mainstream media oligarchs. BTW, censorship (known previously as book burning) marks the beginning of the end for society because complacent, apathetic people are conditioned to accept their mind-controlled lot in life.

There have been a lot of questions over the last few days about our policies on harassment (actually the questions I’ve seen center around your hypocrisy, double standards and willingness to turn a blind eye the puppets of your media overlords) particularly around two YouTube creators: Carlos Maza and Steven Crowder. (This is a smoke screen they want to maintain. This isn’t about two content creators. This is a power play where Comcast NBC Universal and other mainstream outlets are teaming up behind the scenes to get Alphabet Incorporated to capitulate to their desire to send their competition into the internet abyss. They can’t handle that they’re losing there ratings to living room journalists who are doing a better job than they are, who have more integrity than they have and they’re doing it on shoestring budgets as the the mega corporations hemorrhage billions in ad revenue.) These are important issues and we’d like to provide more details and context than is possible in any one string of tweets. (then you should have shut the hell up and got your ducks in a row before you started spewing your crap on dorsey’s platform.)

Since YouTube started 14 years ago, we have focused on providing a platform where anyone can broadcast themselves, connect with people, and share their voices and their experiences with the world. (and that’s were we’d all like to get back to. Why’d you have to mess up a good thing)

This has brought a lot of good — But it has also created many challenges. One of the most important issues we face is around harassment.

(oh…like when NBC Universal’s guy openly condones the bodily assault of people who don’t believe like he does?)

We enforce our policies here rigorously and regardless of the creator in question:

(This is meme worthy. If you truly did that….virtually every rap artist, metal band, late-night show and comedy routine would be ousted from your platform. Tons of rappers advocate for open violence…but you do nothing and you should do nothing. Let people post like they use to post. Back when you were doing that you weren’t losing 70 billion dollars in market cap. Subscribers were happier…content creators were happier. Sure..there will be bad apples…let them fall of the tree…the free market will take care of them.)

In the first quarter of 2019, we removed tens of thousands of videos and accounts for violation of our policies on cyberbullying and harassment (and in that same first quarter, you lost over 70 billion dollars for Alphabet inc. How about waking up and smelling the coffee? How about, stop trying to become what people flocked to YouTube to get away from?)

We also removed hundreds of millions of comments, many of which were flagged and removed due to harassment. (Harassment…online harassment…think about that for a second. Someone you don’t know and will probably never met is saying mean things about you….so what. Ignore them or let the content creator block them from there own channel. How about concentrating on keeping the platform running and stop worrying about trying to micro manage interactions between people)

That said, policies need to keep up with current problems. One particular challenge we face more and more these days is creator-on-creator harassment. It’s an issue that Susan addressed in her latest creator letter. We update our policies on an ongoing basis to make sure they’re current.

(sounds like current isn’t working. YouTube worked WAY better a decade ago in terms of people being able to create their own content and policing their own channel.)

Just today, we took another step in our fight against hate speech and our responsibility to reduce the spread of harmful borderline content.

(first of all…there is no such thing as fighting hate. Or fighting speech. What you’re fighting is people. These euphemisms cloud the real issue. People are saying things other people don’t like. SO WHAT. Nobody is forcing Carlos Maza to watch Steven Crowder’s content. The only reason Maza even knows what Crowder says is because he’s such a fan of his content that he went through it to pick out all the occurrences of his gay Latino spiel. Isn’t it rational to assume that if someone is bothering you online, you just don’t visit the channel they’re on? We don’t need a daddy YouTube to step in and start smashing heads.)

As mentioned, one of our upcoming projects will reexamine our harassment policy, as well. As an open platform, we sometimes host opinions and views that many, ourselves included, may find offensive. (yeah…and that’s what made YouTube great. It used to be a decentralized sharing platform where people could pretty much say whatever they wanted and you could either listen or go somewhere else.)

These could include edgy stand-up comedy routines, a chart-topping song, or a charged political rant — and more. Short moments from these videos spliced together paint a troubling picture. (troubling to Whom? What may be troubling to some won’t be troubling to others. So, if it troubles you…don’t tune in.)

But, individually, they don’t always cross the line. (what LINE? The arbitrary….you better not say anything against the official story, line?)

There are two key policies at play here: harassment and hate speech.

(No, there’s one key policy censorship on a supposedly open platform)

For harassment, we look at whether the purpose of the video is to incite harassment, threaten or humiliate an individual; (“purpose of the video” you mean like “INTENT?” Who’s going to decide what the intent is?)

or whether personal information is revealed. We consider the entire video: For example, is it a two-minute video dedicated to going after an individual? A 30-minute video of political speech where different individuals are called out a handful of times? Is it focused on a public or private figure? For hate speech, we look at whether the primary purpose of the video is to incite hatred toward or promote supremacism over a protected group (Protected group. Now we’re getting into the area of partiality and favoritism. When you say protected group, this automatically implies that there’s a group or groups you deem Unprotected. So, you’ve dug a hole for yourself. What groups do you consider unprotected. And why would you NOT protect them, but you would protect others?)

; or whether it seeks to incite violence. To be clear, using racial, homophobic, or sexist epithets on their own would not necessarily violate either of these policies. For example, as noted above, lewd or offensive language is often used in songs and comedic routines.

(Yeah…and, according to you…you masters of double speak…these are examples that break your own TOS)

It’s when the primary purpose of the video is hate or harassment (Oh…like Eminem’s video dissing and hating on Trump which has over 49 million views and premium long play ads?)

And when videos violate these policies, we remove them. (Uh…no ya don’t…otherwise you would have removed Nicki Menages crap, Jay Z, Eminem…and a whole host of content coming from the entertainment and music industries…but you turn a blind eye to them and decide to slam people who question mainstream government narratives.)

Not everyone will agree with the calls we make (hell you guys don’t even agree with some of the calls you make you couldn’t even get this Crowser/ Maza thing right)

some will say we haven’t done enough; others will say we’ve gone too far.

(No…pretty much every sane person is saying, just back off and let it be YouTube again…even your investors. Might wanna take a second and listen to someone other than corporate masters who’r trying to co-opt the very things YouTube was trying to get away from.)

• And, sometimes, a decision to leave an offensive video on the site will look like us defending people who have used their platforms and audiences to bully, demean, marginalize or ignore others. (yeah…actually if you did that for everybody…you wouldn’t appear to be the kowtowing bitches of silicon valley….grovelling and licking the boots of corporate media billionaires.)

• If we were to take all potentially offensive content down, we’d be losing valuable speech —

• (that’s about as laughable as it is disingenuous….or is it laughable BECAUSE it’s disingenuous? They don’t care about VALUABLE speech…they care about censored speech. And their actions over the last couple of days have proven this)

• speech that allows LEFTISTS…I mean, people everywhere to raise their voices, tell their stories (unless it’s against the official story), question those in power (unless those in power wrote the history we say you can’t talk about like that N word around the WW2, or that even that happened in that school in Connecticut…or that thing that happened around the turn of the century with those three buildings that fell after being hit by only two plans…can’t question those things), and participate in the critical cultural and political conversations of our day. (now you need to get your scuba gear on cause the shit’s so deep I’m surprised I can still read my computer screen) Even if a creator’s content doesn’t violate our community guidelines, we will take a look at the broader context and impact, and if their behavior is egregious and harms the broader community, we may take action.

• (finally some honesty….in other words…you don’t even have to have violated our vague rules….if we wanna take it down…we’re gonna take it down and penalize you anyway. And that is why YouTube content creators and subscribers can’t have nice things.)

• 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.

• (yeah…we all already knew that)

• However, (and there’s your “but”…but what?) 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.

• (here…why don’t you do this for once YouTube…why don’t you get specific and define exactly what that egregious behavior was exactly. The reason you won’t do it is because, by keeping things real vague like, you get to keep the content up that you wanna keep up and you get to take the content down that doesn’t appeal to your left leaning non sensibilities. That way, people can’t fight the ghost of vagary.)

• In order to be considered for reinstatement, all relevant issues (which we’re never specific about) with the channel need to be addressed, including any videos that violate our policies (which you just got through saying they didn’t…so which is it?)

• , as well as things like offensive merchandise. (please demonstrate how “socialism is for FIGS” is offensive. Who does it offend? People who like fruit?)

• In the coming months, we will be taking a hard look at our harassment policies with an aim to update them (that equals more censorship) — just as we have to so many policies over the years — in consultation with experts, creators, journalists and those who have, themselves, been victims of harassment. We are determined to evolve our policies, and continue to hold our creators and ourselves to a higher standard. —Chris Dale, YouTube (to which I would say…Holding yourself to a higher standard shouldn’t be any trouble since you can’t get much lower in the barrel than you’ve already chosen to take this train-wreck of a censor-hungry platform.

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