The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) is urging for YouTube to completely ban President Trump after an assault on the US Capitol on 6 January. The step shows that the newly created group, composed of employees and contractors at Google’s parent company, is dead set to control topics that go well beyond employees’ rights.
On Wednesday, YouTube deleted a video of Trump discussing the assault, citing his stance against material that claims widespread electoral fraud. But the union called the reply “lackluster” and said the business had not gone far enough. YouTube is refusing to recognize anything Donald Trump is being held responsible for because of its own rules and policies. So far it has only removed one video instead of removing all the videos from its platform. People have been saying that YouTube is supporting the white nationalist mindset by not removing all the videos that support it. They also said that YouTube shouldn’t be a way to recruit fascist people.
“Everything less is to face deadly violence: from Gamergate to Charlottesville, from Christchurch to Washington D.C., from Jair Bolsonaro to Donald Trump. Alphabet, in failing to act, has caused immense damage: to the millions of civilians of hatred and to the world.”
Alex Hanna, a research scientist at Google and a representative of AWU, said to The Verge: “It’s absolutely crucial that our group has spoken out on YouTube to help perpetuate white supremacist content, disinformation, and hate speech on the site… As staff, we are in a unique position to complain out against this activity and drive Alphabet into being focused on social consequences of its innovation when it goes against its own profit opportunities.”
Other outlets have also taken proactive measures to stop Trump going to spread lies and distortions and provoke abuse. On January 7th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a blog post that Trump will be suspended permanently from both Instagram and Facebook for at least the next two weeks.
Twitter took a much weaker position, locking Trump’s account for 12 hours. The organization said that it would indefinitely suspend the president if it were to breach its policies.