YouTube apologizes on last day of Pride to LGBTQ creators

02 Jul 2018

Anya's feminist icons are Leslie Knope and Lauren Bacall. When…

YouTube apologized on Twitter for the ways they’ve ‘let the LGBTQ community down’.

The company made their statements on Saturday (30 June), the last day of Pride.

‘It’s the last day of Pride Month and we wanted to reach out to the LGBTQ community,’ they wrote on the social media platform.

‘We’re proud of the incredible LGBTQ voices on our platform and the important role you play in the lives of young people.’

Then they continued by acknowledging their missteps.

But we’ve also had issues where we let the LGBTQ community down–inappropriate ads and concerns about how we’re enforcing our monetization policy. We're sorry and we want to do better. 2/4

— YouTube (@YouTube) June 30, 2018

They specifically cited ‘inappropriate ads’ as well as their monetization policy.

‘We’re sorry and we want to do better,’ they wrote before continuing.

It's critical to us that the LGBTQ community feels safe, welcome, equal, and supported on YouTube. Your work is incredibly powerful and we are committed to working with you to get this right.4/4

— YouTube (@YouTube) June 30, 2018

They finished with one final tweet: ‘It’s critical to us that the LGBTQ community feels safe, welcome, equal, and supported on YouTube. Your work is incredibly powerful and we are committed to working with you to get this right.’

Will it be enough for creators?

This is not the first time YouTube’s policies and actions have directly affected LGBTQ creators, nor the first time they’ve apologized.

Last year, a ‘family-friendly’ filter blocked LGBTQ content. They then apologized for that.

A month later, they announced the filter would no longer affect such content.

Lately, however, creators have criticized the platform for anti-LGBTQ ads. They also complained of their ads being demontized and stripped of ads, reportedly due to words like ‘transgender’ in titles.

The tweets don’t outline any specific actions and people are wary of the apology.

https://twitter.com/partlycara/status/1013818713022320640

the LGBTQ+ community does not feel safe, welcome, equal, or supported on YouTube. we've been detailing for years how you could do better and nothing has changed.

in fact, it's gotten worse. YouTube is largely a cesspool of alt-right conspiracies and harassment ~response~ videos. https://t.co/N4AzjtuFTP

— Riley J. Dennis (@RileyJayDennis) July 1, 2018

lmao @YouTube, don't act like you suddenly care about us in the lgbtq+ community and want to do right. Talk is cheap.

— lynn (@banditotreehous) July 2, 2018