After nearly a week of deliberation, YouTube has agreed to pull YG’s controversial video for “Meet The Flockers.”
The move comes as hate crimes against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are on the rise in the United States, especially among the elderly, as people scramble to find someone to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The song, which appears on YG’s Krazy Life album from 2014, is about robberies in Asian communities. Last week, some Google YouTube employees demanded its removal, but the video-sharing giant was reluctant to do so for fear of causing a flood of other videos to be removed as well.
According to Bloomberg, the internal debate began when some YouTube employees asked the company’s Trust & Safety team to remove it, but an executive from that department and another content policy chief refused the request in an email to employees.
“We find this video to be highly offensive and understand it is painful for many to watch, including many in Trust & Safety and especially given the ongoing violence against the Asian community,” the executives wrote. “While we debated this decision at length amongst our policy experts, we made the difficult decision to leave the video up to enforce our policy consistently and avoid setting a precedent that may lead to us having to remove a lot of other music on YouTube.”
The email continued, “YouTube has an open culture, and employees are encouraged to share their views, even when they disagree with a decision.”
In a statement, YouTubes Spokeswoman said, “We’ll continue this dialogue as part of our ongoing work to balance openness with protecting the YouTube community at large.”
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