YouTube Has Deleted an Activist’s Fundraising Video for Gays Persecuted in Chechnya
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YouTube recently censored a video from adult performer Carter Dane promoting an Aug. 18 Montreal fundraiser for Rainbow Railroad, a Toronto-based organization that has helped queer people flee the ongoing anti-LGBTQ violence in Chechnya. The Carter Dane YouTube censorship continues a long, ongoing pattern of YouTube mishandling LGBTQ content.
In the video, which has also been posted to Instagram (below), Dane and Amp Somers, a YouTuber who runs his own sex education channel called “Watts the Safeword,” discussed the ongoing campaign of kidnapping, detainment and torture of queer people in the semi-autonomous Russian republic of Chechnya.
Here’s the Carter Dane YouTube video in question:
Next, Dane and Somers mentioned an Aug. 18 Community Day Event fundraiser happening during Pride Montreal. The event will feature gay erotic celebs like adult performer Skyy Knox and YouTube butt-man Bryan Hawn. It’s also being co-sponsored by gay porn studios like Cockyboys and Falcon as well as sex-related products like Fleshjack and Get Studio Ready, a company which makes “the first ultra-premium scrub designed to make eating ass more enjoyable.”
Even though the video didn’t mention sex and only featured Dane and Somers speaking into the camera while wearing tank tops, Dane later announced via Twitter that YouTube had flagged the video for violating its community guidelines.
Thanks @youtube… Because a video announcement of a charity event is worth suspension now? pic.twitter.com/fEB4tyksYF
— Carter Dane~Official (@_CARTERDANE) July 10, 2018
At the start of Pride month, YouTube released a #ProudToCreate video highlighting its many LGBTQ-identified content creators. However, the video came at a time when YouTube itself was being criticized for displaying anti-LGBTQ advertisements before the videos of LGBTQ-identified creators, essentially allowing the platform to profit off of queer people and their haters while de-monetizing the videos of LGBTQ creators who the platform claims to support.
Somers tells Hornet, “Personally, I’ve been through lots of age restriction demonetization and banning of our channel in search. I’ve been trying to put together tons of instances of this LGBT censorship of which there are lots of examples.”
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Somers says Dane has contested the flagging by YouTube. We have reached out to Dane to let us know how YouTube responds.
