After months of pressure to remove the channel of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, YouTube has opted instead to demonetize his show, America First, on the platform.
On Friday in a Twitter post that says, “i had a bad day,” Fuentes shared screenshots of messages from YouTube informing him of the change.
YouTube said in one of the messages that “a significant portion” of Fuentes’ channel, which he has used to deny the Holocaust and sympathize with violence against Mexican immigrants, doesn’t comply with the platform’s policies for monetization.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, identified a specific months-old video on Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) as violating the platform’s hate speech policy. YouTube also disabled the channel’s “super chat,” which allows viewers to comment in real time during video streams. Those chats ran alongside his videos and often included racist, sexist or otherwise offensive comments from Fuentes’ fans.
In December, Big If True reported that dozens of podcasts, including Fuentes’ show, use mainstream platforms like YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify to spread hate speech. At the time, YouTube said it would review the shows flagged by Big If True, but it only removed one channel for violating its hate speech policies.
After the publication of that story and other reporting from Big If True, Apple Podcasts and Luminary removed Fuentes’ show. America First is still available on Spotify and iHeartRadio, as well as YouTube.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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