Democrat lawmakers, led by Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Adam Schiff, wrote an open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki calling on the censorship of “incel” content on YouTube. The letter warned that YouTube is an “easily accessible [pathway] into the larger ‘incelosphere.’”
Incel is short for “involuntary celibates.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The letter cited a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that analyzed 1,183,812 posts made on “the world’s leading public incel websites and pages, as well as content on YouTube.”
The letter notes that the investigation by CCDH found that YouTube offers “a corpus of ideological instruction, recruiting material, and other content that encourages incels.”
“While incels have been described as loners or socially isolated, they in fact are embedded in highly active, densely-interconnected online communities that encourage and celebrate their horrific beliefs and acts,” Durbin and Schiff wrote.
The letter asked why incel-related channels have not been removed for violating community guidelines. It also asked if Google and/or Youtube have “performed any assessment of the threat posed by the fact that your platforms recommend and serve incel and male-supremacist content to young users.” The lawmakers also asked if Google could “commit to downranking the ‘feeder’ forums that are driving people to ‘incelosphere’ forums.”
YouTube is yet to respond to the letter.
