Popular YouTube creator Soph’s YouTube channel with almost 1 million subscribers has been deleted less than a day after her most recent video was taken down for “hate speech.”
The video titled “Pride and Prejudice” was shot in Soph’s usual satirical style and this time made fun of Pride Month, the LGBTQ community, and radical Islam. Shortly after it was uploaded, YouTube took it down for “hate speech.”
Shortly after the takedown of this video, Soph’s entire channel was removed from YouTube for unspecified community guidelines violations.
Soph has responded to the deletion of her YouTube channel by urging fans of her content to follow her on BitChute and support her on Patreon, adding that she believes nothing of value was lost. “Pride and Prejudice” is also still available to watch on BitChute.
The removal of Soph’s channels follows Soph facing numerous sanctions from YouTube after she was the subject of a BuzzFeed hit piece in May. After this hit piece was published, Soph received multiple channel strikes and was temporarily suspended from uploading videos to YouTube. Soph’s upload block was lifted in June but her return to YouTube was short-lived with this complete channel termination coming just two months later.
Soph’s channel termination is yet another example of YouTube becoming increasingly hostile to independent creators. The rate at which channels have been demonetized or deleted has increased substantially since YouTube rolled out its new “hate speech” rules in June.
YouTube’s chief product officer Neal Mohan has also suggested that things are going to get worse for creators going forward. He says the company is working on new “creator-on-creator harassment rules” policies which will likely prohibit criticizing, debating, or joking about other creators. He also suggested that positive discrimination could be applied to YouTube’s so-called “authoritative sources” at the expense of independent creators.
