YouTube promises to take a 'hard look' at its harassment policies amid backlash

YouTube says it plans to "reexamine" its harassment policies after coming under fire for its response to a conservative commentator's use of homophobic insults in his videos.

The company faced pressure to take action against conservative host Steven Crowder after Vox's Carlos Maza compiled instances of Crowder attacking him in videos by mocking his sexuality and ethnicity. Crowder in some of the videos also wears a T-shirt with a gay slur on it, which he also sells on his store. YouTube came to the decision that Crowder's videos did not violate its policies, but on Wednesday decided to suspend monetization on his channel.

YouTube attempted to explain its thinking in a subsequent blog post, saying that "using racial, homophobic, or sexist epithets on their own would not necessarily violate" its harassment or hate speech policies and that it's only "when the primary purpose of the video is hate or harassment" that a video would be removed.

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But in the coming months, YouTube says it's going to be "taking a hard look at our harassment policies with an aim to update them," with the company saying it plans to consult experts, creators, journalists, and victims of harassment.

It remains to be seen how this closer look might alter YouTube's harassment policies, but YouTube on Wednesday had previously announced new policies banning all supremacist content and videos promoting hoaxes. As BuzzFeed News reports, however, this initially had some unintended consequences, with a history teacher's channel being removed because it had Nazi propaganda on it for educational purposes. YouTube later brought the account back online.