YouTube to ban videos promoting racism and discrimination, Latest World News - The New Paper
World

YouTube to ban videos promoting racism and discrimination

This article is more than 12 months old

Videos promoting racism and discrimination to be removed

WASHINGTON YouTube announced on Wednesday it would ban videos promoting or glorifying racism and discrimination as well as those denying well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

The announcement by the Google-owned video-sharing platform was the latest in a series of tech industry moves to filter out hateful and violent content, which have spurred calls for tougher regulation.

"YouTube has always had rules of the road, including a longstanding policy against hate speech," a company statement said. "Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting 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 move comes after a call by world leaders in Paris last month to curb extremism online, following revelations about the live-streaming of a mosque massacre in New Zealand.

"We will begin enforcing this updated policy today; however, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we'll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months," YouTube said.

YouTube and other platforms have also been seen as havens for conspiracy theorists denying the Holocaust or the September 11 attacks, and for Nazi and white supremacist groups.

BOGUS THEORIES

In January, YouTube said it would stop recommending specious videos such as those claiming the earth is flat or promoting bogus theories about the September 11, 2001, attacks or the 2012 killings at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. But it stopped short of banning such content.

YouTube said it would seek ways to keep some of the violent content to make it available to researchers.

But the latest move is likely to eliminate numerous "channels" that use the platform for monetisation.

"We have longstanding advertiser-friendly guidelines that prohibit ads from running on videos that include hateful content and we enforce these rigorously," the statement said.- AFP

WORLD