YouTube has removed supremacist channels for "repeatedly" breaking its rules, for example, claiming that certain groups of people are inferior to others, Google’s video platform said on Monday. "After updating our policies to better address the issue of supremacist content, we saw a 5-fold increase in the number of videos removed and ended more than 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech rules "said a spokesperson.
The death at the end of May of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white police officer, sparked a huge movement against systemic racism, which forces institutions and businesses, which would otherwise be accused of complicity and laissez-faire, to reconsider their actions. Social networks are more than ever criticized for being too tolerant of content that incites hatred or violence against minorities. YouTube nevertheless recalled that the fight against supremacist content had started a year ago.
Several banned channels
The platform then decided to ban "any video claiming that a group was superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion, based on attributes such as age, gender, origins, caste , religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. " In the event of an infringement, and as a warning, the streaming service may withdraw certain privileges from channel hosts, such as the possibility of monetizing their content.
On Monday, YouTube banned the channels of American Renaissance (and AmRenPodcasts), NPI / RADIX (and rpspencer, Richard Spencer, a neo-Nazi activist), Stefan Molyneux and David Duke, known to have led the Ku Klux Klan. "I had almost 1 million subscribers, over 250 million views and I have always preached for peace and reason in the resolution of social conflicts," said Canadian Stefan Molyneux on Twitter. Denying the accusations against him, this commentator, who notably promoted eugenics according to the American press, accused YouTube of having destroyed "14 years of his life" and of targeting "anti-communist intellectuals".