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Video hosting platform YouTube owned by tech giant Google has stepped up its involvement in the social media deplatforming campaign, terminating the accounts of those promoting “hateful and supremacist content” and cracking down on content which incites “harassment” against other people.

YouTube announced these new policies in two blog posts titled Taking a harder look at harassment and Our ongoing work to tackle hate.

The new harassment policy was triggered by Vox writer Carlos Maza complaining to YouTube about conservative media personality Steven Crowder allegedly using racist and homophobic language towards Maza.

While YouTube has not taken the more extreme measure of terminating Crowder’s YouTube channel which has 3.8 million subscribers as his videos “did not violate our Community Guidelines“, it has demonetized his channel and removed him from the YouTube partner program to recognize “the widespread harm to the YouTube community” by Crowder’s videos.

Crowder has responded to YouTube’s decision by pointing out the double standards of this policy by highlighting the abusive content by liberal and progressive personalities who have not been demonetized.

In an indication he would not be addressing “relevant issues with the channel” to have his monetization reinstated Crowder issues a series of sarcastic apologizes to everyone he has ever offended on his show.

Other YouTube channels that have been completely demonetized include Avi Yemini and Revenge of the Cis. Many are now turning to crowdfunding platforms to make up for the lost revenue, but even they have entered the deplatforming movement in recent times.

YouTube has also stated they would be “reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices” and “continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies”. Many on the right wonder who will be the target of the reductions and who will be chosen as trusted creators.

In it’s new policy prohibiting “hateful and supremacist content” the examples YouTube listed were “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion” which specifically contain content that “glorify Nazi ideology and that deny “that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place”.

This new YouTube policy saw two prominent Australian nationalist channels Australian Meditations and Shermon Burgess shut down yesterday morning. Both channels had grown to over 4,000 subscribers.

Australian Meditations had a mixture of Australian history videos, historical videos from Australian nationalist personalities and commentary videos on current events.

Many of the videos were restricted by YouTube post the Christchurch massacre. Early on Thursday morning Australian Meditations was sent this email from YouTube.

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Australian Meditations had previously been banned from Facebook back in February. His remaining social media presence is an account on Gab and a Telegram channel. He is also intending to open up an account on free speech video hosting platform BitChute.

Shermon Burgess on Sunday had his three Facebook accounts disabled, along with his Instagram account and was unable to create any new accounts. His YouTube account being terminated on Thursday meant he was completely deplatformed.

He has opened up an account on Gab under his Great Aussie Patriot name and also intends to open up a BitChute account to continue making his regular video content.

The problem for Australians with YouTube introducing this stronger policy against “hateful and supremacist content” is that its free speech alternative Bitchute is blocked by ISPs Telstra, Optus and Vodafone for hosting the Christchurch mosque shooting video.

DTube another free speech video hosting platform is blocked for this same reason. LiveLeak had also been blocked for this reason but this has since been lifted.

But the actions of these ISPs taking it upon themselves to censor Australia’s internet shows this could very well be the next step of online deplatforming. Currently Australians can evade this censorship for now by using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

With YouTube now joining Facebook and Twitter in purging “extremist” content under pressure from activist corporations and governments it will further popularize their free speech alternatives Gab, Minds, MeWe and Telegram.

Author Details
Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.
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Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.