YouTube CEO asks forgiveness to LGBT neighborhood for ‘painful’ choice

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on Monday excused injuring the LGBT neighborhood over a questionable choice not to remove a popular user’s channel for tossing homophobic slurs at a reporter who is gay.

Last week, YouTube, which is owned by Google, drew blowback for not taking more stringent actions versus a conservative comic called Steven Crowder, who targeted Carlos Maza, an author and video host for Vox. Masa developed a supercut of Crowder calling him a “lispy sprite” and “little queer.”

YouTube stated Crowder’s videos didn’t breach the website’s guidelines. The business later on stated it would demonetize Crowder’s channel.

“I am truly, truly sorry,” Wojcicki stated at the Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I know it was hurtful to the LGBT community. That was not the intention.”

But despite the fact that Wojcicki said sorry, she stated she backed up the choice, including that the business needed to be “consistent” in its policies. “If we took down that content, there would be so (much) other content we’d need to take down,” she stated. “We don’t want to be knee-jerk.”  

In action to the choice, LGBT Google staff members were supposedly furious with the business. The San Francisco Pride Board likewise supposedly thought about leaving out Google from its parade over the debate.

Platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are dealing with extreme examination for their capability to police the material on their platforms. Facebook in March revealed it was prohibiting white nationalist and separatist material. But it has actually likewise dealt with blowback for its choice to leave up a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that had actually been doctored to make her appear intoxicated. (YouTube chose the video was unsuitable and eliminated it from its service.)

Last week — a day after the Crowder debate started to roil the business — YouTube stated it was punishing hate speech by getting rid of videos that press extremist views like white supremacy or reject occasions like the Holocaust or Sandy Hook shooting. The brand-new guidelines forbid any video “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.”

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