New YouTube policies designed to more aggressively address content from supremacists have also led some creators to claim that their videos were incorrectly removed or concealed in the process. They argue that YouTube does not distinguish between actual hate content and videos documenting hate groups for educational or journalistic purposes.
YouTube announced Wednesday that it was taking stricter action to ban “videos that claim a group is superior to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities such as age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. ” Just minutes later, creators began to see channels removed or videos downloaded, including a channel run by a history professor, a video uploaded by the Southern Poverty Law Center and freelance journalist Ford Fischer.
Fischer is a YouTube-based reporter covering politics, activism, and extremism. He has filmed footage from events such as the Unite the Right white supremacy rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, as well as gay pride parades. Fischer says that some of his images are used by documentary makers and educators to study extremism and activist groups around the world. The edge
The two videos that were removed by YouTube included previously unreleased footage of prominent white supremacist Mike Enoch speaking at an event that occurred two months before Unite the Right. That recording was used in a documentary exploring how white nationalism can spread in the United States. The second featured pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups meeting to debate a Holocaust denier. Since their material falls under the categories YouTube has since banned, those videos were removed despite their educational context.
“They are also supposed to care that their content creators are being paid fairly.”
Just an hour after the YouTube blog went up, his entire channel was demonetized without any instructions on how to appeal it. Fischer, who has faced increasing demonetization in recent months as YouTube cracks down on images that include hate speech, lost one of his main sources of income. Fischer maintains that he is not broadcasting hate speech and that it is unfair that YouTube is not using better moderators when deciding which channels are affected.
“They are also supposed to care that their content creators are being paid fairly,” says Fischer. “They don’t care about the financial support of the community.”
He’s not the only one who feels this way. Jared Holt, an investigative reporter at Right wing clock who covers both the far right and the far right, says The edge That YouTube Restricted one of the videos from your post. focused on Rick Wiles, a well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Wiles said YouTube was controlled by “the synagogue of Satan” in one of his own videos. Although The clock on the rightCoverage of Wiles ‘sentiments was restricted, Wiles’ original video remains above.
It’s part of a larger structural problem that’s under the microscope now, according to Holt. Anytime YouTube releases an “intermediary fix or patch to defuse criticism of the platform’s operation, the company faces significant problems,” Holt said.
YouTube declined to comment on either case when asked to do so. The edge, But he pointed to a document indicating that the company relies on teams to review the videos before removing or hiding them. 99.3 percent of those reviews are automatically flagged by YouTube’s machine learning algorithm, but a reviewer is the one who decides if the video should be removed. The YouTube blog post also acknowledged that “some of this content is of value to researchers and NGOs seeking to understand hate to combat it, and we are exploring options to make it available to them in the future.”
“That is not an appeal, they want me to go to my channel and delete things without explanation or context,”
“If YouTube really cares about its community of creators and wants to foster a healthy community on its site, part of the equation is to step up and be there for the content creators,” says Holt. “That is something we have not seen in this round of action by YouTube.”
Holt belongs to a larger news organization, but Fischer is alone. Without YouTube monetization, you have to rely on license agreements and subscriptions from Patreon, which only bring in a few hundred dollars every few months. News organizations and documentary makers sometimes pay Fischer to use their raw footage, but he said it’s not a reliable source of income. The only consistency it had was advertising on YouTube; without it, you don’t know what will happen next.
“You can reapply [for advertising privileges] like you’re a new creator in 30 days, “says Fischer The edge “That is not an appeal, they want me to go to my channel and delete things without explanation or context. That is not plausible to me, and I don’t know if I want to do it. Much of the imagery that they would consider controversial has been used in government, politics and is historically important. “
