Youtube Removes 17,000 Channels & CNN Whines It's Not Enough

YouTube says it has removed more than 17,000 channels for hate speech, representing a spike in takedowns since its new hate speech policy went into effect in June. The Google-owned company calls the June update -- in which YouTube said it would specifically prohibit videos that glorify Nazi ideology or deny documented violent events like the Holocaust -- a "fundamental shift in our policies" that resulted in the takedown of more than 100,000 individual videos during the second quarter of the year. The number of comments removed during the same period doubled to over 500 million, in part due to the new hate speech policy. YouTube said that the 30,000 videos it had removed in the last month represented 3 percent of the views that knitting videos generated during the same period. YouTube says the videos removed represented a five-times increase compared with the previous three months. Still, in early August the ADL's Center on Extremism reported finding "a significant number of channels" that continue to spread anti-Semitic and white supremacist content.