An intensely racist segment on Steven Crowder’s YouTube show, which was taken down by the social media giant earlier this week, did not violate its hate speech rules.
That’s according to a post on Medium’s OneZero vertical by Will Oremus, who contacted YouTube about its Tuesday decision to pull down the show, in which he viciously attacked and mocked African-Americans and slavery, using long-standing racist tropes about drugs and alcohol use.
“We removed this video for violating our Covid-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content claiming that the death rates of Covid-19 are less severe or equally as severe as the common cold or seasonal flu,” a YouTube spokesperson told Oremus.
But the shocking smears Crowder and his co-hosts trafficked in did not run afoul of YouTube’s terms of service.
“Our hate speech policy prohibits content promoting hatred against groups based on their race. While offensive, this video from the Steven Crowder channel does not violate this policy,” the same YouTube spokesperson clarified.
Oremus went on note the delicate stance being taken by YouTube, which derives large audiences from far right personalities like Crowder but has also been heavily criticized for fueling and promoting outrageous right-wing misinformation and smears with its algorithms.
It’s a stance that helps to explain how a personality who often traffics in stereotypes and bigotry can thrive on YouTube by walking right up to the line. Despite what YouTube acknowledges has been a series of violations of its platform policies, Crowder has amassed a huge subscriber base there, remains a member in good standing of YouTube’s partner program, which allows creators to earn money from ads YouTube places on their videos, and has his channel recommended by the platform’s algorithms.
*story by MEDIAite
