'Authoritarian and hypocritical': What the modern-day YouTube looks like

Traditionally, YouTube was seen as a safe space where content creators had the freedom of speech to be open with their opinions. Furthermore, the platform had a totally hands-off policy with respect to all kinds of drama between online personalities. It allowed content creators to post jokes and satire, among other things. The kind of content that people got banned for on Twitch was not even looked at twice on YouTube.

On the other hand, Twitch is a rather different platform. Here, content creators are never supposed to talk about each other, and doing so could easily lead to strikes and even bans. However, things have recently appeared to change as some of YouTube's recent moves have been highly criticized on the internet.

YouTube's new TOS has been applied rather haphazardly, of late.

YouTuber Optimus has posted a detailed video on the matter.

Is the modern-day YouTube 'authoritarian and hypocritical'?

In the video, we see the YouTuber explain that there has been a rather troubling dichotomy in the way YouTube responds to threats these days. They either go out of their way to permanently ban or suspend the channel or they leave the content creator altogether. In the past, we have seen this play out quite a lot of times.

Firstly, in the recent case of YouTubers ‘Nelk Boys’, the platform responded with a rather ominous tweet which was seen as problematic by Optimus. It had so happened that ‘Nelk Boys’ had hosted a party and invited hundreds of people, totally disregarding the coronavirus guidelines. YouTube responded with what many people thought was a very authoritarian statement.

If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our ecosystem we take action to protect the community. We suspended the NELK channel from the Partner Program because they encouraged large numbers of people to disregard social distancing guidelines, creating a large public health risk.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) September 12, 2020

The problem here is not that the YouTubers were punished but it was the way in which YouTube explained the move. Any content creator’s actions that are seen as harmful to ‘YouTube’s ecosystem’ will warrant action from the platform. However, this has not played out in certain situations.

We recently talked about the case of YouTuber ‘Peluchin Entertainment’, who has been accused of animal abuse multiple times, and how no action was ever taken against him by YouTube.

There is also Leafy’s case, where the content creator was permanently banned for posting videos mocking Pokimane.

It is no secret that YouTube has been applying their new rules rather haphazardly, something Optimus also thinks is highly problematic. The same notion is shared by various other YouTubers, including Jeremy “TheQuartering” Habley.