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It may have been designed to allow people to cheerfully play YouTube celebrities with water balloons, but it seems that YouTube's live super chat feature is now being used to broadcast hate speech.
An article published this week in The Wall Street Journal reveals that in the aftermath of the collective shoot in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, some YouTube users used Super Chat and paid for antisemitic comments to parade alongside 39, a stream broadcast by YouTube's far-right celebrity, Ethan Ralph.
"If you want to know if the shooting of the Synagogue was a false flag, check out Larry's life insurance policies regarding those dead Jews," one would have read.
The use of Super Chat for such comments is another example of how racist and other inflammatory content finds its way online despite efforts to control it. Facebook, Twitter, Google YouTube and others struggle to keep their platforms free from hate speech, misinformation and material of contention.
The question of super-cat has apparently existed for some time. The newspaper quotes a May article from BuzzFeed News indicating that far right and white nationalist personalities have enjoyed this function for months.
At the Google I / O Developer Conference in May 2017, YouTube unveiled the Super Chat as a way to allow viewers to pay a sum of money to YouTube's artists. Typical Super Cats enhance the viewer's message and keep it at the top of the normal thread.
During the I / O demo of the new feature of that time, a YouTube product manager sent a $ 500 Super Chat during a live program of The Slo Mo Guys, YouTube stars counting millions of subscribers. The Super Cat triggered a horn, signaling a crowd of people to start nailing them with water balloons.
It seems that the uses of Super Chat are not necessarily so light.
Last Friday, YouTube had told the Journal that it had permanently banned Ralph's "Ralph Retort" channel from its service for violating the rules and conditions of use of the platform. YouTube receives a share of the money sent to celebrities via Super Chat and also tells the Journal that any Super Chats product that violates its hate speech policy is donated to a charity. It was also announced that he had started using machine learning technology to spot hateful comments and retain them for closer inspection, the Journal added.
"Hate speech and content that promotes violence are banned on YouTube," a YouTube spokeswoman told the newspaper. "We have also been working in recent months to refine our policy on access to monetization features, and while this work is underway, we are committed to continuing to improve the fight against hate online."
Neither YouTube nor Ralph immediately responded to CNET's request for comment.
The video site is facing a difficult and difficult situation. The Journal stated that when a channel is suspended for a violation, its creator may jump and show up as a guest on someone else 's channel. And like other platforms, YouTube must try to find a sometimes delicate balance between banning harmful content and allowing broad expression.
iHate: CNET examines how intolerance is invading the Internet.
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