…But that’s about all they’ve done.
For some time, LGBTQ YouTube creators have complained about YouTube’s treatment of LGBTQ users. Last year, YouTube tagged videos related to LGBTQ issues as inappropriate for under 18 users, no matter how innocent the topic. The notion was that any LGBTQ issue wouldn’t be appropriate for children, an incredibly homophobic and transphobic stance. YouTube was excruciatingly slow to fix the issue, but they eventually did.
YouTube, owned by Google, is still a problematic place for LGBTQ content creators though, as vlogger Chase Ross points out in his tweets above. When he specifically mentions the words “trans” or “transgender” in his video description, YouTube’s filters immediately marked the videos as “unsuitable.” LGBTQ YouTubers are also reporting homophobic anti-LGBTQ advertisements running before or during videos with LGBTQ-focused content.
On the last day of June, Pride Month, YouTube apologized to the LGBTQ community for their treatment of LGBTQ users, but didn’t announce plans to improve anything.
In This Article:
Why YouTube Apologized
Demonetization
Monetization on YouTube is a tricky business, likely made worse now that YouTube is offering paid premium tiers. However, it works similar to blogs or other webpages using Google’s AdSense ads (like this blog). YouTube content creators allow ads on their videos, and a portion of the proceeds from those ads goes to the creators. Companies creating ads can target users based on the content the YouTuber is making, and the viewers they get. This is one of the ways YouTubers make money.
Demonetization is a practice in which YouTube flags videos so their creators don’t receive advertisements because the videos contain “sensitive material.” This would be content that YouTube allows on their platforms, but may disgust advertisers who wouldn’t want their brand associated with it. Not only does demonetization take money away from content creators, it can also serve as a warning to the creator that their work is borderline unsuitable for the platform. Surely you can see how this would upset LGBTQ users.
Automated LGBTQ Demonetization
YouTube seems to automatically demonetize videos that mention LGBTQ issues, especially those from transgender users. Google claims this is due to their machine learning algorithms, which hateful parties could influence. They claim they didn’t design their algorithms to target LGBTQ people intentionally. If anti-LGBTQ hate groups target transgender users, the artificial intelligence algorithms could start seeing “transgender” as the common cause for reported videos, and therefore flag words like “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “transgender,” “queer,” or “pansexual” as tags for videos that are unsuitable. It seems Google has nothing in place to protect their machine learning from hate speech. This could explain why LGBTQ content creators find YouTube instantly flags their videos for demonetization. This has been happening for years now, with few changes.
Hateful Ads
Alliance Defending Freedom is an anti-LGBTQ hate group, as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They advocate for criminalizing homosexuality, state-sanctioned sterilization of transgender people, and lobby for “religious liberty” laws, that are thinly-guised laws to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people. Naturally, this is not a group that should be allowed to purchase advertising from YouTube, right? And even if they were, they certainly wouldn’t be allowed to put LGBTQ content creators and their audiences in their crosshairs, right?
Wrong.
Chase Ross’s video above discusses how anti-LGBTQ groups targeted him. These groups reported his videos enough that YouTube automatically either demonetized or removed them completely. YouTube also forced his viewers to watch disgusting bigotry before Chase’s videos. Not only should YouTube ban videos preaching hate, but they should also prevent hate groups from targeting people like this. YouTube responded saying that content creators could find a setting in AdSense to disable this advertising. However, as an AdSense user, I can tell you, finding these filters and banning hate speech from your platform isn’t easy or obvious. It’s also not the default setting, as you’d expect.
LGBTQ YouTubers already have to face demonetization on their videos. Now they have to block the few ads that YouTube would allow on their videos: hate speech.
What Will YouTube Change?
Fortunately, YouTube has admitted wrongdoing after months of claiming no fault. However, they’ve promised no sweeping changes to keep this from happening. They won’t keep LGBTQ users from facing harassment, they won’t ban hate speech ads, and they won’t fix their demonetization issues. On the last day of Pride Month, they did issue the below apology on Twitter (emphasis mine).
“It’s the last day of Pride Month and we wanted to reach out to the LGBTQ community. We’re proud of the incredible LGBTQ voices on our platform and the important role you play in the lives of young people. But we’ve also had issues where we let the LGBTQ community down-inappropriate ads and concerns about how we’re enforcing our monetization policy. We’re sorry and we want to do better. We’ve taken action on the ads that violate our policies and we are tightening our enforcement. And when we hear concerns about how we’re implementing our monetization policy, we take them seriously and make improvements if needed. It’s critical to us that the LGBTQ community feels safe, welcome, equal, and supported on YouTube. Your work is incredibly powerful and we are committed to working with you to get this right.”
https://twitter.com/heythereimshan/status/1001538665032667136?s=21
This apology feels like one of the decisions a public relations or marketing department made without discussing solutions with developers or project managers. YouTube is owned by Google, a company that seems to only make social progress when they’re forced to. However, YouTube’s apology feels especially rushed and hollow, squeezed in on the last day of pride month without a single promise to improve. It’s not sincere, it’s an attempt to placate LGBTQ users without actually improving anything. We’re not buying it.
LGBTQ People Need Each Other
Growing up LGBTQ, you get all the same lessons in life as anyone else, even if they don’t fit. “One day you’ll grow up and marry a nice boy!” But to a young girl realizing she doesn’t like boys, that’s not a comfort. It’s horrifying, a nightmare. Learning you’ll have to seemingly either disappoint everyone you know or live an entire life of misery is terrifying and depressing.
When I was younger, I didn’t even have words for it, whatever I was. I remember telling myself that there just had to be other “girls who liked girls” like me. I refused to believe I was as alone as I seemed. However, thanks to media, like Ross’s ex-wife on Friends and Ellen Degeneres, books I’d secretly skim through in the library (but never check out, due to fear of being discovered), and a liberal health teacher, I came to understand that what I was wasn’t shameful, that I wasn’t wrong or weird. But those people only gave me a way to find my real community: the wonderful people I’d meet online.
Thanks to forums and blogs, I learned who I was. I found a community. I found self-love and acceptance. I found pride. LGBTQ children just like me are doing the same today. That’s why our videos on YouTube or our blog posts are so important to us. Sex-ed classes don’t teach about us. History classes (usually) don’t either. Media depicting LGBTQ people is rare, and when we can find such movies or TV shows, LGBTQ people are often punchlines or plot twists that disgust the main characters. We don’t have all the same benefits straight people have. But we have each other. We have our “found families,” we have our online communities.
LGBTQ Children are Vulnerable
Children especially need to be introduced to this welcoming and loving community. To a little kid who feels like a “freak,” who doesn’t understand why they are the way they are, videos from people online can be a godsend. It can save young LGBTQ children from loneliness, self loathing, even suicidal thoughts. But hitting them with a hateful ad, or pushing LGBTQ people out of these spaces will have the opposite effect. This is why the rate of self harm, depression, and self loathing are highest among LGBTQ people who are told their ways are sinful, unacceptable, or “wrong.” It’s why many countries and states ban “conversion therapy” for child abuse tactics. Yet YouTube allows this same targeting.
We need these videos and these communities. YouTube’s actions and hollow apologies strike at the core of our community. Their policies have attempted to corrode a vital tool of ours, and they’re doing little to nothing to stop it. YouTube is in a position to do great things for the LGBTQ community. Instead, they’re harming us.
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