COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 06/06/2019
Mathew Ingram
Facebook executives must be breathing a huge sigh of relief. The giant social network has been in the news for weeks, facing a legion of critics for its inaction on misinformation and harassment. This week, the spotlight has been trained on YouTube, instead. The Google-owned video-sharing site started the week off on the wrong foot because of its ongoing failure to take action against YouTube creator Steven Crowder for his repeated homophobic slurs aimed at Vox journalist Carlos Maza, something Maza says has been going on for months. The platform’s do-nothing approach was further compounded when YouTube said Crowder’s videos didn’t breach its rules, and therefore would not be removed. “While we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies,” YouTube said on Twitter.