Conservative comedian Steven Crowder lives to fight on YouTube another day — for now.
A deplatforming campaign launched by LGBT activist and Vox host Carlos Maza has failed. Claims that Mr. Crowder has engaged in a “harassment” campaign against the liberal commentator were rejected by the social media giant on Tuesday.
“We take allegations of harassment very seriously,” YouTube replied to a “Louder With Crowder” montage posted by Mr. Maza on May 30. “We know this is important and impacts a lot of people. Our teams spent the last few days conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us, and while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies. As an open platform, it’s crucial for us to allow everyone–from creators to journalists to late-night TV hosts–to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies. Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.”
YouTube’s comments echo arguments made by Mr. Crowder, independent journalist Tim Pool, and other free speech activists: liberal late-night comedians whose content is posted on YouTube often use language that is far more explosive than their conservative counterparts.
Similarly, Mr. Crowder has said that Mr. Maza — who calls himself “gaywonk” on Twitter — can’t claim he is being harassed after being called gay.
“The war is not over,” Mr. Pool told his YouTube subscribers on Wednesday. “Carlos Maza of Vox is now rallying a bunch of other personalities, influencers, and media organizations to trigger a massive war on YouTube. This will not be the end.”
Mr. Pool added that a huge “culture battle” is brewing on YouTube.
“There’s going to be a bunch of independent creators, people like me who are moderate centrists, center left, saying: ’Stop trying to destroy everything for your personal gain,” Mr. Pool added. “But all of these left-wing digital sites are rallying behind Carlos. He has the corporate establishment machine behind him. He is an authoritarian. He’s a bad person, plain-and-simple. He is a whiny authoritarian who advocates assault on those who he doesn’t like and then he gets mad because he can’t take silly words.”
Mr. Maza, for instance, has advocated for throwing milkshakes at conservative politicians.
“Milkshake them all,” he tweeted May 21 regarding British conservatives. “Humiliate them at every turn. Make them dread public organizing.”
The Vox host, however, cast himself as a victim after YouTube’s ruling.
“I don’t know what to say,” he tweeted Tuesday. “@YouTube has decided not to punish Crowder, after he spent two years harassing me for being gay and Latino. I don’t know what to say.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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