



YouTube's Recent Video Take-downs





YouTube recently tweeted out how they need to do a better job preventing "harassment" on

YouTube

, and also how they updated their harassment policy again. Now YouTube vaguely changing their rules and guidelines is nothing new, however YouTube without warning or question has opted to take down videos they deem "harassment". Well would do they mean by harassment exactly? Well according to their definition: "

Stricter stance on abusive language

: prolonged attacks that insult a person’s intrinsic attributes such as race, physical traits, sexual orientation, religion or gender. Note this won’t affect our openness for a broad range of artistic expression and debate on important issues."













Definitions are nice and everything, but what has this translated to as far as their take downs you may be asking? Well, the famous iDubbbz's Content Cop on LeafyisHere has fallen prey to this new change in policy. Apparently videos of this nature have been labeled harassment under this new change of policy. Clearly their algorithms are at play again, analyzing videos using " sophisticated" parameters that infallibly take down videos fairly. But all sarcasm aside, this is very concerning for the future of YouTubers. YouTube is clearly sending a message that they solely have the authority to enforce what content gets uploaded to YouTube, regardless of the ramifications it has on the quality of content, and how this will make videos lopsided towards family friendly mindless nonsense.













StevenCrowder

uploaded a video in a state of panic talking about how he preemptively took down his videos because of his concerns regarding YouTube's new policy and he was coined the term YouTube Purge. He seems uncertain about the future of his channel on YouTube, and this sentiment is shared by many other creators





Censorship





Based on these experiences, the commentary series on YouTube looks like it is in a dire state, which effectively silences so many creators. The question has to be asked, "How do the algorithms YouTube uses work in determining which videos get to stay on the platform, or get demonetized, etc.? How can these algorithms be trusted to make such important decisions, when they've clearly shown they can't differentiate real harassment from a rant, a roast, or a criticism? It appears big corporate channels seem magically excluded from this type of concern automatically, so clearly there is a different standard for big corporations vs individual creators. In the discussion of censorship, it seems that corporations are deeming what is appropriate or inappropriate to say, what is and isn't harassment, with YouTube at the front of it all. Corporations decide how people can talk and behave vs individuals themselves, that seems to be the message YouTube is trying to propagate.









Speaking Out



