Free speech advocates who warned of the predictable consequences of allowing powerful tech companies to police online discourse seized on YouTube’s attempt Wednesday to purge hate speech from their video platform after creators performing public service journalism and education were swept up in the effort.
“Apparently, creating and implementing vague, arbitrary censorship standards on the fly in response to mob demands and then purging people en masse end up suppressing and punishing many voices that censorship advocates like. Who could have guessed this would happen?”
Click Here: Geelong Cats Guernsey—Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday’s purge came after days of sustained criticism over YouTube’s handling of bigoted content produced by fringe alt-right commentator Steven Crowder that targeted Vox media personality Carlos Maza. After nearly a week of online outrage, YouTube demonetized Crowder’s channel and then launched a site-wide cleanup of what the company defined as hate speech and targeted harassment.
But the purge also caught journalists and historians up in its wake as the tech giant’s heavy-handed response to Crowder’s harassment didn’t allow for context in most of the content.
The most prominent of those voices swept up in the purge thus far is Ford Fischer, a video journalist who reports on extremism in U.S. politics on his YouTube page, News2Share.
Fischer’s page was demonetized Wednesday at 1:25 PM for promoting “harmful or hateful content,” though what that content was is unclear, he told Common Dreams.
“Their explanation was extremely vague and offered no specifics,” said Fischer. “I haven’t heard from them since then.”
Youtube removed two videos six minutes prior to the demonetization move, said Fischer. One of the pair featured a Holocaust denier being yelled at by protesters on either side of a protest at AIPAC. Fischer believes it was removed “because one person in it was a Holocaust denier” with no consideration of context.
“What Youtube pretends not to understand is the difference between content that shows a Holocaust denier and content that denies the Holocaust,” said Fischer.
The other Fischer video removed featured comments from neo-Nazi Mike Enoch in a speech introducing Richard Spencer to a crowd of white nationalists at the Lincoln Memorial.
Fischer acknowledged that the videos include offensive language and themes. But, he said, that doesn’t mean they’re being endorsed by him—and, in the case of Enoch, Fischer was covering a news event.
“This content is evidently really important to understanding the complicated political moment we find ourselves in,” said Fischer.
That lack of understanding context was also on display when YouTube deleted historical content featuring images and video of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler that had been uploaded for educational purposes by teachers. The material, which was intended to educate the public on the dangers of fascism, instead was caught up in YouTube’s erasure of content.
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