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"This is a significant and long overdue change," said Becca Lewis, a research subsidiary of the non-profit organization Data & Society, about the new policy. "However, YouTube has often applied its community rules unevenly, so it remains to be seen how effective these updates are."
YouTube's scale – more than 500 hours of new videos downloaded every minute – makes it difficult for the company to track rule violations. In addition, society's historically lax approach to moderating extreme videos has led to a series of scandals, including accusations that the site produced disturbing videos for children and allowed extremist groups to organize themselves. on its platform. YouTube's automated advertising system has linked offensive videos to ads from large companies, prompting several advertisers to leave the site.
Among the contents banned by YouTube's new anti-hate speech policy are videos claiming that Jews secretly control the world, those who say that women are intellectually inferior to men, and therefore some rights must be refused, or suggesting that the white race is superior. at another race, a spokeswoman for YouTube said.
Channels that post hate content, but do not violate YouTube's policies with most of their videos, may receive strikes in YouTube's three-way control system, but they will not be banned immediately.
The company also said that channels that "repeatedly clash with our hate speech policies", but do not violate them, would be removed from YouTube's advertising program, which allows channel owners to share advertising revenue generated by their videos.
In addition to tightening its rules on hate speech, YouTube announced that it would also modify its recommendation algorithm, the automated software that shows users' videos based on their interests and previous viewing habits. This algorithm is responsible for more than 70% of the total time spent on YouTube and has been a major driver of platform growth. But it has also attracted accusations that users would have pushed users down to rabbit holes filled with extreme content and divisional sources, to keep them under surveillance and to boost site usage figures.
"If hate, intolerance and supremacy go hand in hand, then YouTube becomes more fluid," said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a nonprofit organization specializing in civil rights. "YouTube and other platforms took a long time to deal with the structure created to incite hatred."
