YouTube Censorship Used to Defend the Powerful at the Expense of Those Who Are Marginalized

In an abrupt reversal amid an ongoing online firestorm, YouTube announced Wednesday
that it would block conservative commentator Steven Crowder from making
any money on videos he uploaded to the site, following a torrent of
outrage from left-wing groups about insulting remarks he made about a
gay political personality working at Vox.
YouTube,
a Google subsidiary, claimed Crowder had engaged in a “continued
egregious actions that have harmed the broader community,” but
acknowledged that Crowder’s videos “did not violate our Community Guidelines.”
The company stopped short of banning Crowder and deleting his videos
entirely, as many progressive groups and journalists demanded.
Crowder’s
demonetization, in turn, prompted conservatives to renew charges of
large-scale censorship and hypocrisy against the big tech giant. Several
right-leaning content creators, as well as nonpartisan journalists
documenting hate speech, charged that YouTube was engaged in an broad
“purge” Wednesday against their channels, which were not directly
related to the Crowder dispute.
“Vox is still going to be
pissed; they’re not going to be happy with this,” Crowder said in a
video posted to his Twitter account after learning about YouTube’s
action, calling the situation a brewing “Adpocalypse.” Crowder has more
than 3.7 million subscribers on YouTube.
“It’s not a win,” he
continued, “because their goal is to completely get rid of people. We’re
at a point in time right now where people can still have a voice, but a
lot of people are going to lose their ability to lose revenue.”
“Their goal is to completely get rid of people.”— Steven Crowder
In
a livestream Wednesday afternoon, Crowder highlighted a series of
unpunished hateful comments made by liberal commentators — including
Stephen Colbert’s reference to President Trump as “Putin’s c–kholster,”
and Samantha Bee’s mockery of Ivanka Trump as a “feckless c–t.”
The
episode began May 30 with a viral Twitter post by left-wing Vox
personality Carlos Maza, which contained video montage of derogatory
comments Crowder had made about Maza in the past two years. In the
various clips, Crowder variously refers to Maza as an “angry little
queer,” a “gay Mexican,” and “Mr. Lispy queer from Vox.”
Maza, an
openly gay partisan activist, has himself previously used aggressive
language on social media. “Milkshake them all,” he wrote May 21,
referring to right-wing activists. “Humiliate them at every turn. Make
them dread public organizing.”