Each year, people and companies work together to raise awareness for the issues transgender people face in society as part of the lead-up to the Transgender Day Of Remembrance — an annually observed day on Nov. 20 to honor the memory of transgender people who lost their lives due to anti-transgender violence during the year.
However, when YouTube tried to get in on the trend, jumping in on this Nov. 13-19 being the 2021 edition of Trans Week of Awareness, the online giant was lambasted for a tweet that, on its surface, appeared positive.
That’s largely due to the issues transgender creators and users claim to encounter on the platform, contending that the company isn’t actually putting in the work to protect the very people they are using to make themselves look good in an online advertisement.
They originally Tweeted, “Thanks to trans creators for sharing their lives, their experiences, & their journeys #TransWeekofAwareness.” While they have been responding to several positive comments on the original Tweet, they appear to not be engaging with a number of social media users who are lodging complaints.
One issue alleged by creators is that YouTube has, in the past, allegedly demonetized videos simply for featuring the words “trans” or “transgender” in their title, as a 2018 article in The Verge explored.
A person on Twitter even went as far as to write, regarding YouTube’s public trans support, “This would actually mean something if you didn’t allow transphobic organizations like Prager U and others to exist and advertise on your platform, whilst demonetizing and censoring LGBTQ+ topics and creators! But yeah, keep pretending like you’re on our side.”
Several others on the platform weighed in with their own versions of the allegation.
Others pointed out that YouTube has allowed a lot of anti-transgender content on its own platform, with one person contending, “I honestly don’t know how YouTube can claim to care about trans creators when they allow transphobes like Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro to thrive on their platform.”
Even more people discussed how trans people are often mistreated in comments sections.
Many would say that this style of Tweet from YouTube is simply rainbow capitalism — a term used to describe the commercialization and commodification of LGBTQ movements. It seems however that fewer and fewer people are falling for such tactics and are demanding more of companies that try to simply offer lip-service about causes but refuse to back it up.
We Got This Covered has reached out to YouTube for comment.