YouTube Under Fire After Journalist Carlos Maza Was Harassed by Right-Wing YouTuber

YouTube is under fire for not enforcing its harassment policy in the case of a right-wing YouTuber harassing journalist Carlos Maza.
“This is not just one individual harassing me,” Maza stated. “This is a systematic YouTube-wide problem and it’s not by accident. It is the product of YouTube’s choices and the way that it chooses to not enforce its anti-harassment policy.”

The Vox journalist and host posted a video on May 30 of Crowder’s homophobic and derogatory comments from seven videos he posted targeting him over the last two years. Maza says he and Vox have complained to YouTube about the comments in the past. Since he went public with the harassment, Crowder’s fans have follower his lead and harassed Maza online. This also comes after he was doxxed in 2018 and spammed on his personal call by Crowder fans.

YouTube’s cyberbullying and harassment policy says users shouldn’t post content that “make hurtful and negative comments/videos about another person.” But the platform didn’t take action until Maza’s tweets went viral. It acknowledged that Crowder’s videos are “clearly hurtful” but refused to take the videos down.

After more public pressure, YouTube said on June 5 it was suspending monetization on Crowder’s channel.

“If you see YouTube publishing corporate pride branding on Pride Month, you should respond and tell them to f*ck off because they’re exploiting us and using us as props to make more money with advertisers,” Maza said. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish we could appeal to YouTube’s better angel’s but they don’t have better angels.”