YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki struggled to explain the company’s ever-shifting position in responding to journalist Carlos Maza’s harassment by right-winger Steven Crowder.
Two weeks ago Maza released a trove of video of Crowder referring to him as “an anchor baby, a lispy queer, a Mexican,” among other racist and homophobic slurs. Maza alleges that the harassment went on for two years before he reported it to YouTube. Initially, the video hosting site declined to do anything about the videos, saying that Crowder’s words didn’t violate YouTube’s policies. The company later reversed course, first demonetizing Crowder’s channel before shutting it down completely.
At the Code Con conference for techies in San Francisco this week, reporter Ina Fried of Axios pressed Wojcicki about the company’s waffling response.
“I’m really personally very sorry,” Wojcicki explained. “It was not our intent. Our goal was…YouTube has always been a home of so many LGBTQ creators and that’s why it was so emotional and that’s why I think this really…even though it was a hard decision it was made harder that it came from us because we’ve been such an important home, and even though we made this decision which I’m going to get into a little more with your question…but…the same…YouTube…we’ve so many people [on] YouTube from the LGBTQ community, and we’ve always wanted to support the community in spite of this hard issue that we’ve had right now.”
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Related: YouTube is investigating this right-wing homophobe for harassing a gay journalist
“We don’t want to just be knee-jerk we need to think about it in a very thoughtful way,” Wojcicki went on, “be able to speak with everyone, we’ll speak to people from the LGBTQ community, make sure we’re incorporating that going forward in terms of how we think about harassment and make sure that we’re implementing that in a fair and consistent way going forward. It was a hard week across the board and I am truly, truly sorry for the hurt that we caused that community. It was not our intention at all. Not that I want to take away from the hurt or the challenge of what happened this week but I do want to let you know that many of the changes that we made in the hate policy which is a different set of policies we think will be really beneficial for the LGBTQ community. And there are a lot of videos there, and a lot of ways that community is attacked where we will be taking down those videos going forward.”
"Are you really sorry for anything that happened to the LGBTQ community? Or are you just sorry they were offended?"
Watch @SusanWojcicki's response at #CodeCon: pic.twitter.com/5MqJxL8QVS
— Recode (@Recode) June 10, 2019
After an initially confusing response, YouTube announced a new policy that would ban “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.”
In addition to shutting down Crowder’s channel, the site has begun deleting other videos, including some by white nationalists James Allsup and Gavin McInnes.
Cam
The right wing has played victim and scream “Liberal Bias” for decades in the hopes that media would lean to the right out of fear of being called Biased.
The problem is, people are finally catching on and now media is getting backlash for supporting bigotry and racism.
truthseeker
Why was your DCguy account banned
Cam
@truthseeker
Translation: The account that always defends right ring bigots tries to deflect from the topic of a social media platform protecting anti-LGBT bigotry.
No surprise there.
dwes09
Always amusing when a regressive chooses an account name that is the opposite of that they post. And as expected “truthseeker” deflects, obfuscates and constantly mixes up reality with the contents of his imagination.
Jared MacBride
Maza isn’t being harassed. You put your opinions on social media you may not like all the feedback. The guy is just a whiner who pulls out the gay card when things aren’t to his liking.
Juanjo
Thank you for sharing your opinion, as illogical and incoherent as it may be. Your first declaration is not supported by anything else in your response nor does it respond to the actual evidence presented concerning the actual comments directed at Meza.
Jared MacBride
@Juanjo – Your disagreement with me is proof I am correct. Thanks for the verification.
Cam
You have to love the accounts that defend right wing bigots.
Daring to point out that the Melania Trump lied about graduating high school or has never shown evidence of any of these 5 languages she claims to speak sparks outrage and cries of “Bullying”.
Meanwhile Maza has had his address and phone number published and people are being told to harass him and the same right wing accounts defend the attacker. Why? Oh, right, they always defend the bigots who hate LGBT people
Black Pegasus
Carlos Maza and people like him are toxic. He and VOX are responsible for thousands of youtube channels being demonetized (or banned) by youtube’s new policy. Yet every article I see published about this little crybully are nothing but leftist lies. If you want to know what really happened, please educate yourself and see what this guy really stands for. He’s not a victim. He’s a bully.
truthseeker
I don’t understand the outcry about all of this. Crowder merely referred to Maza using terms that Maza himself uses to describe himself. Everything Crowder said were things Maza referred to himself as on Twitter, in interviews, or in Youtube videos.
Calling someone Mexican when they cite that they are Mexican is now hate speech and an offense. Calling someone Queer who refers to himself as Queer (Remember LGBT and Q) is now also considered hate speech.
Cam
@truthseeker
I notice that the same accounts that defend anti-LGBTQ bigots are trying to lie about this story.
Mazza was doxed, his phone number and address were given out. Weird how you guys keep leaving that out.
truthseeker
@Cam (used to be DCguy until he was banned)
Crowder never called on people to dox Maza and never posted Maza’s details online. So I don’t know how that’s relevant to Crowder and why he should be responsible for that
dwes09
Be specific and list a “leftist lie” or two.
Generally that term refers to realities that are not congruent with regressive imaginations.
dwes09
“truthseeker
I don’t understand the outcry about all of this. Crowder merely referred to Maza using terms that Maza himself uses to describe himself.”
As is typical you ignore the concepts of context and intent as if they don’t exist. Calling someone “an anchor baby, a lispy queer, a Mexican,” is clearly questionable in terms of content (I doubt many people refer to themselves as “anchor babies”, considering how demeaning that is).
And Queer is undeniably a charged word, especially constructed as “lispy queer”.
It’s usage is exactly the same, in terms of variable meaning, as ‘the n-word’. In fact straight regressives LOVE to use it as an epithet because they can then claim is is not, being in common usage.
Regressives never seem to understand context, intent, nuance, motive….
Are you all really that dull?
djay36
This article says that YouTube has taken down Steven Crowders channel. Yet I just looked on you tube and his channel is still up? Can anyone explain this?
mr guy
In reality it has only increased Crowder’s subsricptions; “increased his power” — per Vice headline. Classic own goal.
I wish there was a balanced gay news site, or at the very least a center or center-left (my own position) where I could read the actual facts instead of biased hysterical outrage click-bait telling me what I ought to think or im a bad gay or worse
Brian
You are a Nazi for even suggesting such a thing exist.
dwes09
Try Pink News. It is British, so at least it would have a different perspective, and their official stance is to be non-partisan.
There is also The Advocate.
Half the fun of Queerty though is the clickbait and the creepy right-wing posters.