YouTube Updates its Harassment Policy – What Does That Mean For You?

Bullies, Hate Speech and Implied violence – The new YouTube Harassment Policy now addresses the slightly grey side of YouTube comments and content. In an update announced on 12 Dec 2019, YouTube are being stricter with users who make threatening content and users commenting with abusive comments as well.

Policy Update – https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/12/an-update-to-our-harassment-policy.html

Over the last several years we have worked to improve the way we manage content on YouTube by quickly removing it when it violates our Community Guidelines, reducing the spread of borderline content, raising up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information and rewarding trusted creators and artists that make YouTube a special place. Today we are announcing a series of policy and product changes that update how we tackle harassment on YouTube. We systematically review all our policies to make sure the line between what we remove and what we allow is drawn in the right place, and recognized earlier this year that for harassment, there is more we can do to protect our creators and community.

A stronger stance against threats and personal attacks – We’ve always removed videos that explicitly threaten someone, reveal confidential personal information, or encourage people to harass someone else. Moving forward, our policies will go a step further and not only prohibit explicit threats, but also veiled or implied threats. This includes content simulating violence toward an individual or language suggesting physical violence may occur.

We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation. This applies to everyone, from private individuals, to YouTube creators, to public officials.

Consequences for a pattern of harassing behavior

Something we heard from our creators is that harassment sometimes takes the shape of a pattern of repeated behavior across multiple videos or comments, even if any individual video doesn’t cross our policy line. To address this, we’re tightening our policies for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to get even tougher on those who engage in harassing behavior and to ensure we reward only trusted creators. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our harassment policy will be suspended from YPP, eliminating their ability to make money on YouTube. We may also remove content from channels if they repeatedly harass someone. If this behavior continues, we’ll take more severe action including issuing strikes or terminating a channel altogether.