INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
At today House Judiciary hearing addressing &Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism,& hate appears to have prevailed.
As the hearing
live stream aired on the House Judiciary YouTube channel, comments in the live chat accompanying the stream were so inflammatory that
YouTube actually disabled the chat feature mid-hearing
Many of those comments were anti-Semitic in nature.
Hate speech has no place on YouTube
We&ve invested heavily in teams and technology dedicated to removing hateful comments / videos
Due to the presence of hateful comments, we disabled comments on the livestream of today House Judiciary Committee hearing.
—
YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) April 9, 2019
Unsurprisingly, the hearing struggled to balance its crowded witness list, which included
Facebook public policy director Neil Potts and Google public policy lead Alexandria Walden
Potts emphasized that Facebook recently righted its course with regard to white nationalism, though this shift is still in its earliest
days.
&Facebook rejects not just hate speech, but all hateful ideologies,& Potts said in the hearing
&Our rules have always been clear that white supremacists are not allowed on our platform under any circumstances.&
The hearing was probably
As Democrats attempt to grapple with the real-world effects of white supremacist violence, voices on the far right — recently amplified by
figures in Congress — denounce that conversation outright
When political parties can&t even agree on a hearing topic, it usually guarantees a performative rather than productive few hours and, in
spite of some of its serious witnesses, this hearing was no exception.
Hours after the hearing, anti-Semitic comments continue to pour into
the House Judiciary YouTube page, many focused on Rep
Jerry Nadler, the committee chair
&White nationalism isn&t a crime its [sic] a human right,& one user declared
&(((They))) are taking over our government,& another wrote, alluding to widespread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
Many more defended white nationalism as a form of pride rather than a hate-based belief system tied to real-world violence.
&… Hate speech
and violent extremism have no place on YouTube,& YouTube Walden said during the hearing
&We believe we have developed a responsible approach to address the evolving and complex issues that manifest on our platform.&
