YouTube has said it won’t punish Steven Crowder, conservative commenter and host of the popular ‘Louder with Crowder’ tv show. His content was flagged by a Vox journalist, a gay man who is accusing Crowder of targeted harassment.
Vox’s Carlos Maza has accused Crowder of peppering his multiple videos, posted on his YouTube channel which has nearly four million subscribers, with race-based and homophobic slurs against him.
Crowder has routinely poked fun at Maza, who is openly gay, referring to him as a “Mister lispy queer from Vox,” “a crappy writer,” “a little queer,” “Mister gay Vox,” “the gay Latino from Vox,” “the gay Mexican guy” and so forth, as he criticized his views.
Maza has posted a video compilation of Crowder’s favorite pet names for him on Twitter.
The target of Crowder’s ire wrote that, once a video that features an insult levelled at him comes out, he gets hit with a torrent of racist and homophobic abuse. The journalist reported also that his cellphone was “bombarded with hundreds of texts” urging him to debate Crowder.
Also on rt.com Buzzfeed & the outrage mob hound foul-mouthed 14yo off YouTubeAt the same time, Maza argued that he did not bear a grudge against Crowder, but rather he is “f**king pissed at @YouTube” for its supposed hypocrisy when treating LGTB content creators.
Maza alleges that YouTube, which has been celebrating Pride Month with a rainbow-themed icon, has been exploiting LGTB creators’ popularity, turning a blind eye on the alleged abuse they encounter on the platform.
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Responding to Maza’s complaint, Team YouTube stated Tuesday that, while it “found language that was clearly hurtful” in Crowder’s videos, the videos themselves are not in breach of the streaming service’s guidelines.
“Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site,” it said.
Without taking any punitive action just now, YouTube added that it would be looking into “other aspects of the channel,” without elaborating.
Having been snubbed by YouTube’s censors, Maza has gone into social media meltdown, posting dozens of tweets berating YouTube for turning a deaf ear to “cries for help” and urging “queer and marginalized people” to band together, refuse to participate in YouTube’s Pride Month-linked promotion campaign and “raise hell” until YouTube listens.
While Maza has been crying foul over YouTube’s supposed inaction in combating hate speech, he himself has been caught inciting violence against right-wing activists.
“Milkshake them all. Humiliate them at every turn. Make them dread public organizing,” he tweeted last month.
Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell predictably stood behind the liberal-leaning site’s writer, describing the YouTube as being “broken in some ways that we can’t tolerate.”
Crowder appeared to celebrate his getting off the hook, with memes and a new dosage of ‘insulting’ content.
In a fake ‘I’m Sorry’ apology video published on Tuesday, Crowder repeated all his controversial insults, while showing a poker face, prompting another burst of indignation from Maza.
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