Last week, Maza posted a montage of clips of the right-wing vlogger Steven Crowder using racist and homophobic language to mock Maza, referring to him as a “lispy queer,” “little queer,” and “the gay Vox sprite.” In a series of tweets, Maza argued that Crowder had targeted him for harassment over the past few years and that he had encouraged his followers to harass Maza as well, saying that he had faced a “wall of homophobic/racist abuse on Instagram and Twitter.” On Tuesday, YouTube issued a public response on Twitter to multiple complaints from Carlos Maza, a popular YouTuber and host of the Vox series Strikethrough. And while the platform has since taken a few steps to correct this, banning those peddling harmful autism “cures” and conspiracy theorists of various stripes, many are arguing that the platform took a giant step in the wrong direction when it announced that it would not be taking action against a right-wing vlogger accused of harassing a gay journalist.
Over the past few years, YouTube has been harshly criticized for failing to censor violent or harassing content, while simultaneously allowing racist, misogynistic, or conspiracy theory-promoting content to thrive on the platform.