LGBTQ+ YouTubers Demand Answers After Videos Hidden In 'Restricted Mode'

Style Magazine Newswire | 3/20/2017, 4 p.m.
Several popular LGBTQ+ YouTube vloggers have claimed that YouTube is using the site's "restricted mode" to hide some of their …
The orginal YouTube logo.

Several popular LGBTQ+ YouTube vloggers have claimed that YouTube is using the site's "restricted mode" to hide some of their videos.

The restricted mode for YouTube, according to Google, enables users to filter out "potentially objectionable content," leading some LGBTQ+ vloggers to accuse YouTube of implicitly categorizing their material as not "family-friendly."

That's the complaint British vlogger Rowan Ellis made to Gizmodo, saying, “there is a bias somewhere within that process equating LGBT+ with ‘not family friendly.’”

Ellis posted her own video addressing the issue after she found dozens of her videos fell victim to the process. In a statement to Gizmodo, YouTube said, “Some videos that cover subjects like health, politics and sexuality may not appear for users and institutions that choose to use this feature.”

Mashable has also reached out for comment from YouTube.

On Sunday night, the Twitter account for the YouTube Creators page tweeted the following statement that offered a little more detail on the filtering but didn't explain how some of the more innocuous videos that got caught in the filter wound up there.But YouTube doesn't appear to have answered the question as to why these specific videos were flagged. In one such instance, flagged by user NeonFiona, videos about sex and relationships weren't flagged but videos that directly referred to LGBTQ+ issues were.

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