LGBTQ Content Creators Sue YouTube For Alleged Discrimination

YouTube seems to be getting into a lawsuit again. According to a new report, a group of LGBTQ creators sued the video-sharing website for demonetizing LGBTQ-focused content. Creators accused YouTube of discriminating their content and making it difficult to form them to earn ad revenue.

"I don't feel like people take us seriously and it needs to change," Ross told The Verge. "YouTube really needs to start paying attention to this community ... I don't feel like I belong on a platform that I and other LGBTQ+ individuals helped build."

According to The Verge, back in June 2018 Brett Somers, Lindsay Amer, Chris Knight, Celso Dulay, Cameron Stiehl, Chrissy Chambers, and Chase Ross filed a complaint against YouTube for miss treating LGBTQ creators' community.

The video-sharing website is accused of age-gating and demonetizing their videos because their titles and metadata carried the word transgender.

LGBTQ Creators Sue YouTube For Discrimination

The current lawsuit claims that YouTube uses "unlawful content regulation, distribution, and monetization practices that stigmatize, restrict, block, demonetize, and financially harm the LGBT Plaintiffs and the greater LGBT Community."

Besides, the LGBTQ creators have also accused YouTube machine learning moderation tools and human reviewers for taking off the channels which are using words like transgender, gay, bisexual and more in the headline and titles.

The company's policies "have no notion of sexual orientation or gender identity and our systems do not restrict or demonetize videos based on these factors or the inclusion of terms like 'gay' or 'transgender," YouTube spokesperson told The Verge.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently said that the website does not demonetize the LGBTQ content because of certain words used in the content headline. According to her the machine learning moderation tools work independently and select videos of its own to run ads and recommendation.

However, the current lawsuit contradicts the CEO's statement and accuses the same AI machine learning and manual reviewers for the unfair decision.

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