YouTube has received much criticism from LGBTQ creators in recent months because they believe the platform is discriminating against their videos. A new investigation has now raised even more questions and concerns, revealing that words like "lesbian" and "gay" may be flagged by YouTube's content management bots as being non-advertiser friendly, and thus demonetizing them.

Popular internet culture commentary channel Nerd City published a video on YouTube of an experiment they put together in collaboration with Sealow, the CEO of Ocelot AI, and Andrew from the channel Analyzed. They wanted to test the site to figure out which specific words would lead a video to be demonetized.

The experiment started with a list

Andrew put together a list of over 15,000 common words and phrases, including the most commonly used words in the Oxford Dictionary, popular search terms, and the most read listings on Urban Dictionary. He then manually uploaded short one-to-two second videos with these terms in the titles, featuring no visual or audio content that would be considered a problem to YouTube's bots.

"Most of the words are ones we might expect YouTube to censor," Nerd City said in their video. "Many others put YouTube directly at odds with its progressive messaging. And some of them only make sense to robots."

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Some of the demonetized words seem discriminatory

Nerd City added a link to a Google doc below the video which showed some of the words that trigger demonetization, like "abuse," "boobs," "crime," and "Nazi."

Some of the more random terms deemed non-advertiser friendly include "countryside," "Indonesia," "Missouri," and "leisure." Then there were terms that many LGBTQ creators have long assumed were being flagged, like "gay," "lesbian," and "homosexual." "Straight" and "heterosexual" are nowhere to be seen on the demonetized list (although "hetero" is.)

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To double check whether the specific word was the problem, the team adjusted the title on the same video to add something the bots would consider more neutral.

"When we took a demonetized video and changed the words 'gay' or 'lesbian' to 'happy' or 'friend,' every single time the status of the video changed to advertiser friendly," Een from Nerd City said.

Sealow explained this is not a matter of LGBTQ YouTubers posting videos about subjects that are unsuitable for some viewers, like sex or tragedy, which all creators get demonetized for.

"This is LGBTQ terminology like gay and lesbian being the sole reason for a video being demonetized, despite being perfectly acceptable context," he said.

Nerd City / YouTube

Sealow and Andrew explained in their videos that the list is never going to be 100% accurate because terms are being added and changed all the time, and some are context specific. A lot of videos are also manually reviewed by YouTube, which means a video that was originally demonetized can be monetized when it is deemed as ad-friendly.

Andrew came up with a rating system from green to yellow, which determines how much of a problem a word is for YouTube. Some are always green and will never be flagged as non-advertiser friendly. Others are so far yellow they are always demonetized. But some are borderline, so may be demonetized in some videos and not in others.

YouTube denies any bias or the existence of a list that triggers demonetization

According to YouTube, there is no bias against LGBTQ audience and creators, and there is no specific list to refer to when making the call about demonetization. YouTube's policies and systems only look at the content of the videos themselves.

"We're proud of the incredible LGBTQ voices on our platform and take concerns like these very seriously," a YouTube spokesperson told Insider. "We do not have a list of LGBTQ related words that trigger demonetization and we are constantly evaluating our systems to help ensure that they are reflecting our policies without unfair bias."

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They added that the platform uses machine learning to evaluate content against the advertiser guidelines.

"Sometimes our systems get it wrong, which is why we've encouraged creators to appeal," they said. "Successful appeals ensure that our systems are updated to get better and better."

Een from Nerd City told Insider that YouTube is trying its best to make everyone happy, including viewers, creators, advertisers, journalists, Google, and regulators but "they're scaling rapidly, which is overwhelming their ability to make anyone happy."

"So they keep making these bad decisions, and the creators feel the impact first," he said. "I'm in a position to communicate some of those problems. The information in the video isn't good news, but hopefully just having it out there will make things easier for YouTubers."

LGBTQ creators have been unhappy for a while

This isn't the first time the LGBTQ community has spoken out against YouTube's content monitoring systems. Several LGBTQ creators even teamed up and sued YouTube in August for "discriminatory, anticompetitive, and unlawful conduct that harms a protected class of persons under California law" because they believed it was so blatant.

"Our LGBTQ content is being demonetized, restricted, and not sent out to viewers which has highly affected our ability to reach the community we strongly want to help," said Chrissy Chambers from the channel she runs with her girlfriend BriaAndChrissy.

YouTuber Alfie Deyes also brought up the problem to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki when he interviewed her this summer.

"I've hard rumors if you have the word 'lesbian' in tags or your thumbnail or your title, instant flag," he said.

"We do not automatically demonetize LGBTQ content," Wojcicki said in response. "We work incredibly hard to make sure that our systems are fair."

She also denied that there was a policy about certain words in titles leading to demonetization.

According to YouTube, when LGBTQ creators have complained about certain terms leading to demonetization, the platform has evaluated the systems in place. The company claims that current reviews show the demonetization classification system is working properly and including LGBTQ terms doesn't unfairly lead to them being flagged as unsuitable for advertisement.

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In response to Nerd City sharing the video on Twitter, the TeamYouTube account said: "Wanted to let you know that we've watched your video and the right teams are reviewing your concerns in detail.

"We want to make sure that we give you some clear answers, so we'll follow back up when the teams have been able to take a good, hard look."

More transparency could help YouTube counter allegations of discrimination

Nerd City said in their video it's unlikely to be the case that Wojcicki and YouTube are homophobic, but it could be a massive oversight due to outsourcing, or, more worryingly, an economic decision. In other words, YouTube could be holding creators to a more conservative standard to compliment their global expansion into countries, including those where being gay is still illegal.

"If these are banned words, don't gay creators deserve to know that?" Nerd City said. "Don't they deserve a chance to take those words out of their content, or to look at these rules and say 'Yeah, no thanks.'"

They also said that both YouTube and creators would benefit from the platform being more transparent about its policies and systems in place, because machine learning cannot and should not attempt to completely "sanitize self-publishing."

"Can't you guys just feel in your bones that AI and censorship tools and outsourcing is not going to create a technological Utopia?" they said.

"Robot law enforcement on YouTube just resulted in two years of gay people being treated like it's the 1300s. And who knows what else?"

You can read the full report here.

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