YouTube's
track record with LGBT creators isn't great.
Last year, YouTubers such as Rowan Ellis, Tyler Oakley, Stevie Boebi, and NeonFiona spoke up about their content being hidden, demonetized, or age-gated. YouTube responded with posts in April and May of 2017 that said their system sometimes makes mistakes "in understanding context and nuances," that Restricted Mode "should not filter out content belonging to individuals or groups based on certain attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion or sexual orientation," and promised to fix an engineering "issue" that had lead to the platform "unintentionally filtering content."
Over a year later, however, the same problems persist. In a series of videos posted to his YouTube channel, trans creator
Chase Ross says that for the past three weeks he's been dealing with age restrictions on his videos daily; some of his older videos have been recently demonetized, or stripped of revenue-earning ads, with others being removed completely. He says YouTube has regularly demonetized his videos with the word "trans" or "transgender" in the title — and even run anti-LGBT ads on some videos geared toward the LGBT community.
Ross, a YouTuber for about 12 years, creates videos touching on his personal experiences as a trans person, and the trans community as a whole. In addition to his Trans 101 project, a 31-episode series that educates viewers about subjects like pronouns, terminology, and body dysphoria, Ross has also posted about his personal experiences transitioning. According to Ross, YouTube's algorithm seems to be triggered by the word "trans" specifically to demonetize his videos. He suspects that some of these are the result of the platform's algorithm for evaluating content as well as targeted flagging by anti-LGBT users. "I've done multiple tests in proving that the word transgender on my channels has demonetized my videos," he says in one video. "It's a trigger word. It triggers the algorithm."
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Restrictions on LGBT channels don't just hurt their creators. They also remove education and information for young people who may not have access to it any other way. Ross says that he's had at least 144 videos that have either been demonetized or age-restricted. "I have seen YouTube grow into this beautiful platform of education and community, especially for the trans community," he says. "We all found ourselves here. We found our identities. We figured out who we were. We watched other people's top surgery videos and realized oh my god I need that, I need that feeling. YouTube has been a lifesaver for so many trans people, and I wish that this education that's available now was available when I was younger. But here's the kicker: I was under 18, so all of this education I would not have had access to [if it was age-restricted]."
The troubles with YouTube and LGBT content don't stop there. In a follow-up video posted on June 2nd, Ross pointed out that on top of demonetization and age-restriction, some of his video were also being tagged with anti-LGBT advertisements. The organization behind the ads, Alliance Defending Freedom, has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and has linked homosexuality to pedophilia, and advocated for the sterilization of trans people and the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S.
"I know that it's the algorithm and the bots and the way that everything is coded," Ross says. "But you're allowing an anti-LGBT ad, a very homophobic and transphobic company, [to] advertise their message."
He also questioned why homophobic and transphobic ads were showing up on his videos, especially given how the company has articulated its support for diversity on the platform. (Last August, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki noted the principle of free speech "does not mean companies cannot take action" when that speech perpetuates negative stereotypes or "the language of discrimination.") Ross calls it hypocritical for YouTube to say they support marginalized creators, "and yet on the other side [it's] advertising homophobic stuff on our videos."
