End Monetised Harassment

YouTube content creators such as ThatUmbrellaGuy are making thousands of dollars off of videos which currently go against Youtube's own policies concerning targeted harassment:

Content that features prolonged name-calling or malicious insults (such as racial slurs) based on someone's intrinsic attributes. These attributes include their protected group status, physical attributes, or their status as a survivor of sexual assault, non-consensual intimate imagery distribution, domestic abuse, child abuse and more. 

We know, in 2022, that social media is used to promote harassment. Certainly, 2014's Gamergate became the "template for malicious action online," and that template has been utilised both to radicalise viewers to certain political philosophies and to harass and malign individuals. ThatUmbrellaGuy, for example, has made over 600 videos just about Amber Heard - a project that earned him approximately $80K in May of 2022 according to the Washington Post. ThatUmbrellaGuy seems invested in continuing his mass-production of harassment videos revenue model, moving on from Amber Heard and instead targetting Evan Rachel Wood,  who was a teenager when her abuse started. 

In January of 2022, Geo News released a report the content creators on YouTube made millions off of hate content directed at Meghan Markle. 

We fear that the success of harassment-based video content will inspire others to create similarly malicious content to cash in on the harassment of others. 

These massive smear campaigns have no place on the internet. They skew public opinion, misrepresent information, radicalise individuals, and cause irreparable harm. We consider it a very small ask to simply stop incentivising the creation of this content by putting more safeguards in place to ensure that content of this nature is not monetised. 

Please, Youtube, take a stand against harassment and bullying and end the monetisation of targeted harassment.  At the end of the day, it does not matter if someone is a public individual or a private citizen -- harassment is harassment and Youtube has the ability to become a leader in changing the social media landscape and taking a firm stance against the sexism/misogyny by ending the monetisation of targeted harassment campaigns.