YouTube Is Capitalizing Off Of Pride While Endorsing An Extremist Right-Wing Homophobe

YouTube's Twitter, 6/5/2019

YouTube is trying to have the best of both worlds by currently sporting Pride Month-related graphics on its marketing material and social platforms while also endorsing an extremist right-wing YouTuber. Carlos Maza is an openly gay video producer working for Vox who has found himself being constantly targeted by homophobic YouTuber Steven Crowder over the course of multiple years. Crowder is pretty much obsessed with Maza, and for a taste of his racist and homophobic attacks on Maza, you can check out this video:

Since I started working at Vox, Steven Crowder has been making video after video "debunking" Strikethrough. Every single video has included repeated, overt attacks on my sexual orientation and ethnicity. Here's a sample: pic.twitter.com/UReCcQ2Elj

— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019

I checked out Crowder's channel, and it's truly, truly grotesque. He loves speaking in a gay lisp, has said that like chips, Maza "just can’t eat one, like dicks," and just mocked this entire controversy with a faux-apology video that's already been seen by 1.6M people. YouTube will be the first to tell you that they're woke af, and in their lengthy official guidelines against hate speech, ban content creators from using "racial, ethnic, religious, or other slurs where the primary purpose is to promote hatred. They also ban the use of "stereotypes that incite or promote hatred based on any of the attributes noted above." And add that this can "take the form of speech, text, or imagery promoting these stereotypes or treating them as factual." And plus, they're sporting rainbow imagery as their Twitter avatar. So really. What more do you need. They're Harvey Milk.

Via Reddit

In walks Steven Crowder. Who is homophobic. Who is racist. And whose speech is based solely in hatred. RE: Hate speech. But in response to a growing backlash against Steven Crowder, YouTube is actually doubling down on protecting his content. Here's how they responded to Maza and others confused by the allowance of Steven Crowder's content:

(1/4) Thanks again for taking the time to share all of this information with us. We take allegations of harassment very seriously–we know this is important and impacts a lot of people.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019

(4/4) Even if a video remains on our site, it doesn’t mean we endorse/support that viewpoint.

There are other aspects of the channel that we’re still evaluating– we’ll be in touch with any further updates.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019

Fuck. Off. If Steven Crowder didn't have just under four million YouTube subscribers, surely YouTube would assuage the situation by banning his content. And they would do so by referring to their own guidelines. But they're a business, and he makes them money, and they know that, no matter how much uproar they hear from Maza and the gay community at large, on one's going to stop using YouTube anytime soon. What's the alternative? YouTube is owned by Google - which isn't going to promote a plucky liberal YouTube rival.

If a company wants to operate solely based on business interests, fine. I get it. Frankly, I'm going to get a Spicy Chicken Sandwich at Wendy's after I finish writing this, and I know that that chicken had a way worse life than Maza. But Wendy's isn't pretending that it didn't abuse the fuck out of that poor animal. Everyone knows Dave Thomas hates animals. YouTube is sanctioning online bullying - something that has literally taken the lives of members of the LGBTQ community - while sporting Pride-related graphics. This is just such a laughably textbook case of pinkwashing. It would be like Paula Deen's restaurant hosting an NAACP event. Or again, not to beat this stupid chicken thing to death - Dave Thomas claiming to respect living creatures. It's fucking ludicrous!

No one here's going to boycott YouTube. Not with Miley Cyrus' new music videos on the way. So maybe today's lesson should be - corporations aren't terrible people. They're not people.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

“I’m celebrating all of you. I’m celebrating those of you that are still closeted and don’t feel safe enough to come out. I’m celebrating those of you that are incredible allies for your LGBTQ+ peers and look out for them.” - @jessiepaege

A post shared by YouTube (@youtube) on Jun 1, 2019 at 10:20am PDT

H/T: Gizmodo