YouTube is drafting 'creator-on-creator harassment' rules, but that's all we know so far

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YouTube is drafting 'creator-on-creator harassment' rules, but that's all we know so far


  • YouTube has said that it was working on some new policies to prevent 'creater-on-creator harassment'.
  • In June, a heated controversy was spawned because of Steven Crowder's use of homophobic and racist language to attack Vox host Carlos Maza.
  • YouTube states that it will announce the rules later this year.
It's not just bots and viewers that can be harsh on creators, but other creators as well. YouTube, India's most popular video streaming service, is working on a fix according Neal Mohan, the company's Chief Product Officer, but hasn't shared any particulars about the new regulations.
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But, Mohan did say that YouTube considers them "to be just as important to the YouTube community as any product launch".

The issue of 'creator-on-creator' harassment came to the fore with a series of incidents — especially, the Steven Crowder-Carlos Maza affair

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Earlier this year in June, a heated controversy took over as Steven Crowder, a YouTube star with millions of fans, used homophobic and racist language to attack Carlos Maza, the host of a digital series on Vox Media.


As a result, a YouTube investigation was brought up against Crowder to look into the claims shared by Maza — including those he shared in a long thread of tweets with video clips of Crowder's attacks and talked about being harassed on social media thanks to Crowder's comments.
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'YouTube wants Clicks'

Maza has been called names like anchor baby, a lispy queer, and Mexican. Such hate videos get millions of views on YouTube. According to him, every time one gets posted, he wakes up "to a wall of homophobic/racist abuse on Instagram and Twitter".

Maza chose to direct his anger towards YouTube instead of Crowder because "there will always be monsters in the world" and YouTube, despite having explicit policies against harassment and bullying was still allowing people like Crowder to post videos because "YouTube wants clicks".


The debate that followed called on YouTube to moderate speech on its platform and the extent to which is punishes popular creators. While Mohan told CNET that YouTube's latest move was not spurred by the incident between Crowder and Maza, it is safe to assume the new policies might cover such hurtful videos. It is well known that internal community drama gets worldwide attention.

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So, what did YouTube do at the end of the day?


YouTube 'briefly' removed Crowder's ability to earn ad revenue (they left the channel up but removed ads) after Maza's tweets and Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's CEO, apologised to the LGBTQ community after being taken to task my other creators for "relative lack of action and poor messaging around the situation".

Wojcicki stood by YouTube's decision to not pull down Crowder's channel or ban him entirely. She said that while YouTube "did not agree with his actions and words, his videos didn't constitute cyberbullying or harassment".

Homophobic language, because it was "apparently used in jest and as only fractions of longer videos attempting to rebut Maza's Strikethrough series, didn't violate YouTube's policies as far as the company was concerned".

"Steven Crowder has a lot of videos, and it took some time for us to look at that and understand it in the context of the video because context really, really matters," Wojcicki said while speaking at Recode's CodeCon in June. "We looked at a large number of these videos and we decided they were not violative of our harassment policies," she added.

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There's still a missing piece

YouTube's current policies about harassment and cyberbullying do state that content that has been posted to deliberately humiliate someone or makes hurtful personal comments about someone is in violation of its policies.

And, that's partially why YouTube faced the wrath of tremendous negative feedback when it chose to stand by its decision to not ban Crowder or pull his channel down.

Wojcicki said that there is always room for YouTube to improve and that the company and the platform has come a long way. However, given the current state of things, having clear policies about what 'creator-on-creator' harrassment looks like will help the company move the new policies forward. Just like it has recently done with harmful, hateful content, especially by outlining a branch of content that was once called "borderline" and banning it.
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