They demonetized Stephen Crowder for “egregious actions.”
Then they said he can re-monetize if he stops selling those SOCIALISM IS FOR FAGS t-shirts.
Canada-based hate personality Steven Crowder won’t be able to earn more of Google’s money from his YouTube channel after a “continued review” found a “pattern of egregious actions” contrary to YouTube Partner Program policies, YouTube said to one of Crowder’s bullying victims today. And then, within an hour or so, they walked it all back.
“Update on our continued review,” tweeted TeamYouTube on Wednesday. “We have suspended this channel’s monetization. We came to this decision because a pattern of egregious actions has harmed the broader community and is against our YouTube Partner Program policies.”
YouTube’s communications team linked to the company’s 2018 guidelines about abuse.
Then, a little while later on Wednesday afternoon, YouTube stated that its new position is if Steven Crowder wants to earn money from anti-gay bullying targeted at an individual person, Crowder needs only to stop selling t-shirts that say Socialism Is For Fags.
“To clarify, in order to reinstate monetization on this channel, he will need to remove the link to his T-shirts.”
They can’t stop digging that hole, can they.
Here’s the complete thread about Crowder’s history online harassment and abuse by Carlos Maza [@gaywonk], and the response by YouTube that they’re suspending monetization of Crowder’s channel.
So, I have pretty thick skin when it comes to online harassment, but something has been really bothering me.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
Since I started working at Vox, Steven Crowder has been making video after video "debunking" Strikethrough. Every single video has included repeated, overt attacks on my sexual orientation and ethnicity. Here's a sample: pic.twitter.com/UReCcQ2Elj
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
I've been called an anchor baby, a lispy queer, a Mexican, etc. These videos get millions of views on YouTube. Every time one gets posted, I wake up to a wall of homophobic/racist abuse on Instagram and Twitter.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
Last year, I got doxxed, and it scared the fuck out of me. My phone was bombarded with hundreds of texts at the exact same time. The messages? pic.twitter.com/ls4qBM9k08
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
These videos makes me a target of ridiculous harassment, and it makes life sort of miserable. I waste a lot of time blocking abusive Crowder fanboys, and this shit derails your mental health.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
That being said, I'm not mad at Crowder. There will always be monsters in the world. I'm fucking pissed at @YouTube, which claims to support its LGBT creators, and has explicit policies against harassment and bullying: https://t.co/K9XJGAP7Xp pic.twitter.com/4GUfTDuOXS
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
This has been going on for years, and I've tried to flag this shit on several occasions. But YouTube is never going to actually enforce its policies. Because Crowder has 3 million YouTube subscribers, and enforcing their rules would get them accused on anti-conservative bias.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
Which is all to say: I work my fucking ass off to create smart, thorough, engaging content for @YouTube, a company that claims to give a shit about LGBT creators. And its miserable to have that same company helping facilitate a truly mind melting amount of direct harassment.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
A lot of people have pointed out that Crowder is wearing a “Socialism Is For Fags” shirt in several of his videos.
Turns out, he sells that shirt to his YouTube fans, and proudly displays it in his Twitter cover photo. What are these platforms doing? pic.twitter.com/x9F6xOFNhk
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
If Crowder loses his channel, I’m going to get hit with another avalanche of abuse and will likely get doxxed again.
That’s what’s so fucked up about these platforms: they create wildly powerful monsters and then ask the targets of abuse to draw further attention to themselves.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
Love to sit at home editing together clips of my abuse in order to publicly beg a platform to pay attention.
Love to be an adult gay person and still have my identity marked by public humiliation.
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019
For the record: It’s been over 24 hours since I tweeted this. Every social media page I have is being bombarded.
Crowder has accused me of being part of an NBC conspiracy, re-upped his harassing videos, and generally laughed this all off.
Still nothing from YouTube. pic.twitter.com/6JryGZDzyG
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) June 1, 2019
(1/4) Thanks again for taking the time to share all of this information with us. We take allegations of harassment very seriously–we know this is important and impacts a lot of people.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019
(2/4) Our teams spent the last few days conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us, and while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies. We’ve included more info below to explain this decision:
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019
(3/4) As an open platform, it’s crucial for us to allow everyone–from creators to journalists to late-night TV hosts–to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies. Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019
(4/4) Even if a video remains on our site, it doesn’t mean we endorse/support that viewpoint.
There are other aspects of the channel that we’re still evaluating– we’ll be in touch with any further updates.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019
So the fuck what. Basically all political content gets "demonetized."
Crowder's revenue stream isn't from YouTube ads. It's from selling merch and "Socialism Is For Fags" shirts to millions of loyal customers, that @YouTube continues to drive to his channel. For free. https://t.co/ws8mqvRoKU
— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) June 5, 2019
To clarify, in order to reinstate monetization on this channel, he will need to remove the link to his T-shirts.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 5, 2019
YouTube's new position is if Steven Crowder wants to make money off of homophobic slurs targeted at one person, he better split that profit on YouTube.https://t.co/3LFl2ZyHif
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) June 5, 2019
Seriously YouTube…does that make *any* sense? The account was harassing someone and you're penalizing them by taking away merchandise sales? https://t.co/F1Fjqv2YCf
— Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung) June 5, 2019
YouTube’s anti-harassment policy rollout: pic.twitter.com/SF1MowLXi1
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) June 5, 2019
bet there are some good ass emails circulating at youtube HQ right now
— Max Read (@max_read) June 5, 2019
Just by the way, an exec at TYT told me in my exit interview that when it came to Tracey you had to separate your identity as a Jew from what's right for the company
— Naomi LaChance (@lachancenaomi) June 5, 2019
Since some people are asking for clarification, I was talking about my concerns wrt his kristallnacht tweets and clear soft spot for nazis
— Naomi LaChance (@lachancenaomi) June 5, 2019
Oh! Another exec said he “felt like Hugh Hefner” when he sat down to a table at a restaurant w several young female interns and employees
— Naomi LaChance (@lachancenaomi) June 5, 2019
Interestingly, I've only seen two channels actually BANNED:
Both channels were obscure hardcore neo-Nazi channels.
We're watching YouTube decide in real-time what hate speech they'll make money from, what they'll allow to stay up demonetized, and what they'll ban. pic.twitter.com/vhuJ3Kd6UI
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) June 5, 2019
Overseeing YouTube's standards is an extremely difficult job that I'm glad I do not have, but there's gotta be a more coherent set of responses than this https://t.co/ATUMjAW8Vh
— Amanda Katz (@katzish) June 5, 2019
[via TechMeme]