YouTube has decided to demonetize comedian Steven Crowder after facing pressure from Vox host and writer Carlos Maza who claimed that some of Crowder’s jokes constituted harassment. YouTube ruled that nothing Crowder said in his videos violated its rules but suspended his monetization because he’d supposedly “harmed the broader community.”
The whole situation started when Maza complained about Crowder consistently debunking his Strikethrough video series in a comedic way. Crowder’s rebuttals to these videos consistently receive more views than Maza’s originals and often generate twice the view count. Maza said that he took issue with some of Crowder’s jokes from these videos which he characterized as “homophobic/racist abuse.”
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1134264641482362880
Many of the jokes Maza claims to be bothered by involve Crowder using the term “queer” – a term that Maza has consistently used to describe himself before his complaint against Crowder.
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1113473498322755586
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1110672976238784514
YouTube responded to Maza’s initial thread and said it would look into it further.
Maza then continued to complain about Crowder’s jokes on Twitter while still regularly describing himself as “queer” – a term that he seems to only find offensive when Crowder uses it.
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1135391681090609153
While YouTube was investigating, Crowder also responded and further highlighted the hypocrisy of Maza’s complaints. In his video response, Crowder showed examples of Maza referring to himself as a “queer,” highlighted how he makes similar jokes about his own staff members, and said that this is really about the giant corporate media entity Vox, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, trying to censor Crowder’s much smaller YouTube channel because it’s a competitor.
YouTube then gave an update on its investigation and said that the videos don’t violate its policies.
Maza wasn’t happy with the decision and continued to complain about Crowder making jokes that described him as “queer” at the same time as referring to himself as “queer.”
https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1136137201262178304
Then Vox responded to the decision in The Verge, a publication which is owned by Vox, by openly calling for the censorship of Crowder and saying “YouTube must do better and must enforce their own policies and remove creators who promote hate.” Other legacy media outlets also piled on and complained about YouTube’s decision to not censor one of its own creators.
YouTube ultimately bowed to this pressure and gave a further update saying it had decided to demonetize Crowder.
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