In a recent interview with CNET, YouTube’s chief product officer, Neil Mohan, revealed that the company will be addressing creator-on-creator “harassment” with a new policy update related to abuse later this year.
The interview came amid the flurry of media attention centered around YouTube due to VidCon, the annual video convention that sees big YouTube creators meeting with their fans. According to the CNET article, they paraphrased Mohan’s sentiments, writing…
“[Neil] Mohan also announced at VidCon that YouTube is updating its abuse policy, especially when it comes to creator-on-creator harassment. The company said the move wasn’t spurred by the incident between Crowder and Maza. YouTube won’t reveal any more details, but said the change is coming later this year. “
They specifically mention that the Steven Crowder scenario where the comedian took pot shots at Vox’s Carlos Maza wasn’t the catalyst for this new abuse policy of creator-on-creator “harassment”, but it’s about as transparent in its formulation as Rotten Tomatoes getting rid of the pre-release user comments to save face (and hype) for Captain Marvel.
However, it’s pretty obvious that YouTube is using the Voxadpocalypse as a kicking off point to further clamp down on how YouTubers criticize other Youtubers.
This would be in addition to the recent “hate speech” updates they already applied to Youtube in the wake of the Voxadpocalypse, as reported by Reclaim The Net.
What’s more is that some believe this will be used to help silence critics of shady or corrupt YouTubers, as pointed out by Memology 101.
Since Mohan didn’t define or identify what would be considered “harassment”, we have no idea if that means people actually directing their subscribers or viewers toward someone, or if that simply means criticisms.
Most people automatically assume that given YouTube’s ridiculous past history of over-the-top censorship that even light criticism is going to net people some kind of demonetization or account restrictions.
We have no idea when these new policies will go live, but Mohan mentioned during his VidCon speech…
“This work is just as critical to the future of the YouTube community as any product launch,”
The only way we might see some kind of intercession here is if President Trump actually steps in to stop the censorship spree that big tech are currently on in their quest to socially engineer society and subvert our cultural norms. However, the Trump administration has been lethargically slow in addressing the censorship, and whatever regulatory measures they plan to take may end up being applied too late for them to be effective in any meaningful way.
(Thanks for the news tip johntrine)
