A slew of Google employees are chastising YouTube for not doing enough to penalize a conservative commentator who lobbed homosexual slurs at a Vox journalist.
Google employees are criticizing the platform for failing to ban Steven Crowder, a conservative pundit who has posted videos referring to Vox journalist Carlos Maza as a “gay Mexican.” Employees are dinging YouTube, a Google subsidiary, for not curbing harassment and abusive language directed at the LGBTQ community.
“It’s hard to put my shoes on everyday and go to work when I don’t think the company I work for supports my identity,” an anonymous Google engineer told Business Insider Wednesday. The employee’s comments come as a group of Google workers calling themselves “Googlers Against Hate” tweeted accusations that YouTube is harming gay people.
“Despite YouTube capitalizing on Pride as a marketing campaign, it’s clear they have no issue making policy decisions that harm LGBTQ people like @gaywonk. We have #NoPrideInYT,” the group wrote in a tweet Wednesday. The group shared a retweet Thursday of Maza who said that YouTube’s decision to demonetize Crowder effectively put him on an equal footing with gay groups, which he claims are not allowed to monetize.
“This isn’t the first case of YouTube basically masquerading hate speech as ‘healthy debate,'” the engineer told BI. “It just continues this narrative that Google executives are completely disconnected from Google employees’ wants, needs, and identities.” (RELATED: Twitter Goes Into PR Mode After YouTube Demonetizes Crowder, Other Users)
YouTube demonetized Steven Crowder after Vox personality Carlos Maza pestered them. (Daily Caller)
YouTube also announced Wednesday it was “strengthening enforcement of our existing YouTube Partner Program policies. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can’t run ads on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat.”
The changes, which were reportedly done as a reaction to the Crowder debacle, apparently affected several YouTubers who use the platform to broadcast educational content. One Twitter user calling himself Mr. Allsop History noted in a tweet thread Wednesday that YouTube dinged him for hate speech.
YouTube have banned me for ‘hate speech’, I think due to clips on Nazi policy featuring propaganda speeches by Nazi leaders. I’m devastated to have this claim levelled against me, and frustrated 15yrs of materials for #HistoryTeacher community have ended so abruptly.@TeamYouTube
— Mr Allsop History (@MrAllsopHistory) June 5, 2019
Allsop’s channel has since been restored.
Google, for its part, is wrestling with internal turmoil brewing between the company’s conservative and liberal employees. The Silicon Valley giant fired a Republican engineer Mike Wacker Wednesday who penned an open letter about the company’s “outrage mobs” and “witch hunts.”
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