YouTubers are threatening to close their accounts today after the video site made another controversial policy change.
The Google-owned company has announced new rules designed to prevent ‘harassment’ on the platform.
But the move has angered creators, who are sharing criticism of the new policies using hashtags like #YouTubeIsOver and threatening to move to rival websites.
It’s feared the policies will result in comedy creators being hit with bans if they mock other people and will have a freezing effect on free speech because YouTubers will be too scared to speak their mind.
On Twitter, YouTube wrote: ‘Many of you have told us we need to do a better job preventing harassment on YouTube, so we consulted with a wide array of creators, experts and organizations to update our harassment policy, which changed today.’
The new rules forbid a ‘stricter stance on abusive language’ as well as ‘prolonged attacks attributes such as race, physical traits, sexual orientation, religion or gender’.
‘Note this won’t affect our openness for a broad range of artistic expression and debate on important issues,’ YouTube added.
It also promised a ‘stricter stance on threats’ which includes ‘not only explicit threats but also implicit ones referencing physical violence’.
‘Included here are threats that might not cite a specific time or place, but that may feature weapons or simulated violence,’ YouTube continued.
It also set out punishments for infringing these rules and wrote: ‘Because harassment can be more than a single video, repeated behaviour like maliciously targeting the same individual across multiple videos or comments can lead to penalties like YPP suspension, strikes, or even termination.’
Creators will be given access to a tool which automatically highlights dodgy comments, holds them from publication and invites the channel owner to manually check them.
‘By year’s end, most channels will be enabled with a tool that automatically holds potentially inappropriate comments for review,’ YouTube announced.
‘You can always opt-out, but note that early adopters saw a 75% reduction in flagged comments on their channels.’
YouTube is already alleged to have removed old videos which fall foul of new rules.
Keemstar, anchor and founder of the influential and massively popular news channel DramaAlert, spoke out after seeing that a famous ‘content cop’ video from iDubbbz which roasted the YouTuber Leafyishere has already been deleted.
Keemstar tweeted: ‘You took our notifications away, Now they only work when u want them to.
‘You taken our Social Blade away. You taken our revenue away.
‘Now you have taken our history away. Removing these videos you deem harassment.’
He addressed this tweet to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and added: ‘The YouTube community wants u to step down.’
The DramaAlert host then added: ‘I don’t want YouTube to be “safe place”
‘You are killing comedy by calling a roast of other creators “bullying.”
‘We are public figures we are allowed to be roasted! Comes with the gig.’
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