September 5, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — YouTube has quintupled the number of “hate” videos and channels removed from the platform, the website announced this week.
YouTube removed more than 100,000 videos and over 17,000 channels for violating its “hate” speech policy from April through June, CNN reports, five times the number it had removed in the three months prior. YouTube also took down over 500 million comments due to “hate speech.”
In a Tuesday blog post, YouTube ascribed the increase in removals from the platform to its recent efforts to counter the spread of hate content.
The announcement of YouTube’s fivefold increase in the volume of content removal comes amid continued criticism that the platform and other tech companies act to suppress speech by conservatives, Christians, and pro-life supporters, at times attempting to conflate conservatives with objectionable groups by assigning the speech or content of the former defamatory labels like “hate.”
At the same time, the left continues to criticize YouTube for allowing “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories,” and “extremist views” to spread on its site, and for any sort of recommendation of such content.
YouTube, owned by Google, announced in June it was expanding its policy to ban “supremacist” content and remove videos denying well documented violent events, such as the Holocaust and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The company had said in June it would be removing hundreds of thousands of videos that previously had not been considered in violation of its policy.
YouTube’s recently updated policy bans “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.”
The platform said as well it’s been able to take down more “objectionable” content before it was widely viewed, resulting in an 80% decrease in views on content later removed for violating YouTube’s rules.
YouTube also said Tuesday that its machine learning systems are getting better. More than 87% of the 9 million videos it had removed during the second quarter were flagged first by its automated systems.
In addition to “hate speech,” YouTube videos can be removed for a number of reasons, including copyright infringement, violence, nudity, and spam.
Christians, conservatives, and pro-life supporters have reported examples of suppression of content by YouTube and its parent company Google along with other big tech companies for years.
A former Google employee, an anonymous whistleblower, recently confirmed manual suppression of search topics at the apparent bidding of left-wing media figures.
Last month, YouTube deplatformed a 14-year-old conservative girl following her video critical of Pride Month. Her channel had also been completely banned from YouTube.
In July, YouTube suppressed an ad for a charity supporting military veterans because it contained the word “Christian.”
YouTube completely demonetized conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder in June, responding to calls from left-wing news outlet Vox to ban Crowder entirely.
In May, YouTube demonetized a video conversation between Catholic apologist Patrick Coffin and LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen, saying “it wasn’t suitable for all advertisers.”
Coffin confirmed for LifeSiteNews that certain topics on his podcast — gender confusion, overcoming homosexual tendencies, the damage of the sexual revolution, and anything with the word “Muslim” or “Islam” in the title — have resulted in demonetization.
Earlier this year, Christian author Michael Brown had his entire channel demonetized by YouTube.
Conservative pundit Dennis Prager and his educational organization Prager University (PragerU) sued YouTube beginning in 2017 for censorship, discrimination, and breach of contract related to YouTube’s suppression of PragerU videos.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in June he wanted YouTube to further suppress videos the company considers “harmful,” even if, by its own admission, the videos don’t actually violate YouTube’s stated policy.