YouTube has received much criticism from LGBTQ creators in recent months because they believe the platform is discriminating against their videos. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
'We're proud of the incredible LGBTQ voices on our platform and take concerns like these very seriously,' a YouTube spokesperson told Insider.'This is LGBTQ terminology like gay and lesbian being the sole reason for a video being demonetized, despite being perfectly acceptable context,' he said.Sealow explained this is not a matter of LGBTQ YouTubers posting videos about subjects that are unsuitable for some viewers, like sex or tragedy, which all creators get demonetized for.Videos with 'lesbian' and 'gay' were deemed by the bots as non-advertiser friendly, while 'straight' and 'heterosexual' were fine. They put together a list of 15,000 words and manually uploaded one-to-two second videos to determine which terms got flagged for demonetization.YouTube channel Nerd City posted a video in collaboration with Sealow, the CEO of Ocelot AI, and Andrew from the channel Analyzed, that showed the content management system in action.There was even a lawsuit filed by several creators in August. YouTube has received criticism from LGBTQ creators who say the platform demonetizes their videos.
