YouTube shut down the ability for users to post comments on the livestream video of Tuesday’s congressional hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism, after users began flooding the live comment section with remarks it considers “hate speech.”
The video-sharing platform disabled the option for its users to comment on the House Judiciary Committee’s livestream video of Tuesday’s congressional hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism due to the “hate speech” comments being posted during the hearing.
YouTube, which typically offers a feature allowing users to comment on its live videos in real time, had disabled the feature for one of its videos on the House Judiciary Committee’s account after users began leaving “hateful comments” in reaction to the congressional hearing.
Hate speech has no place on YouTube. We’ve invested heavily in teams and technology dedicated to removing hateful comments / videos. Due to the presence of hateful comments, we disabled comments on the livestream of today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.
— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) April 9, 2019
“Hate speech has no place on YouTube,” stated the video-sharing platform’s press account in a tweet, “We’ve invested heavily in teams and technology dedicated to removing hateful comments / videos. Due to the presence of hateful comments, we disabled comments on the livestream of today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.”
The hateful YouTube comments appeared to be mainly anti-Israel and antisemitic remarks, but when users began to notice that the option for them to post comments to the livestream was no longer available, they simply started commenting the same rhetoric on other livestreams of the hearing.
About one hour into the hearing, YouTube’s press Twitter account informed the public that it had disabled the feature due to the presence of hateful comments.
Users reacted to the announcement on Twitter by reprimanding the video-sharing platform, and expressing their frustration over YouTube not doing enough to ban other types of “hateful” rhetoric on its platform.
Here are a few of the Twitter reactions below:
YouTube is the place for Hate speech.. Just see the political videos being shared in India.. Open your eyes YouTube 😂😂
— That Nair Boy (@surajv369) April 9, 2019
I've seen lots of places for hate speech on YouTube you might want to give that a lookaroo
— Smeallie 🏳️🌈🐊 (@KyleSmeallie) April 9, 2019
lol "has no place", clearly it has….
— Auja-winduR Mārs (@Zegh8578) April 9, 2019
"We disabled comments… but didn't ban the racists because they still give us ad revenue."
— Anastasia_Fall 💗🌺 (@Anastasia_Fall) April 9, 2019
Seems like YouTube is THE PLACE for hate speech actually
— DOD (@dcodea) April 9, 2019
disable the site.
— Me Tweet Pretty One Day (@DCCrackhead) April 9, 2019
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
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