عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Inciting Hate Speech

YouTube pulled the plug on six far-right channels as online social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down on hateful rhetoric. AFP
YouTube pulled the plug on six far-right channels as online social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down on hateful rhetoric. AFP
TT
20
TT

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Inciting Hate Speech

YouTube pulled the plug on six far-right channels as online social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down on hateful rhetoric. AFP
YouTube pulled the plug on six far-right channels as online social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down on hateful rhetoric. AFP

YouTube on Monday shut down six far-right channels for violating rules against "supremacist" content, booting videos by David Duke, Stefan Molyneux and Richard Spencer.

The video sharing platform pulled the plug on the channels as online social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down on hateful rhetoric.

All the terminated channels broke YouTube rules by alleging that members of protected groups were innately inferior to others, according to the Google-owned video platform.

"We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies," YouTube said in response to an AFP inquiry about the move.

Since updating guidelines a year ago to better address supremacist content, YouTube saw a fivefold spike in video removals and has terminated more than 25,000 channels for violating hate speech policies, the spokesperson added.

YouTube said that the channels removed Monday included Duke, Molyneux, Spencer and American Renaissance.

Some of the nixed channels violated rules against linking YouTube videos to hateful content hosted elsewhere on the internet, the company said.

According to AFP, Spencer confirmed the suspension of his account in a tweet that included a screen-capture of a message from YouTube citing policies against glorifying or inciting violence against a person or group.

In a video posted on Twitter, Molyneux said his offerings on YouTube were erased, contending that the action was unwarranted.

"The accusation is the usual one that I am fomenting violence and hatred and so on, which is not true at all," Molyneux said in the video.

"It is a huge blow."

Most Viewed

 
Varieties

California Forest Has Oldest Living Tree Located in Closely Guarded Secret

A 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah is growing high at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California, United States on November 28, 2021. (Getty Images)
A 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah is growing high at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California, United States on November 28, 2021. (Getty Images)
TT
20
TT

California Forest Has Oldest Living Tree Located in Closely Guarded Secret

A 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah is growing high at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California, United States on November 28, 2021. (Getty Images)
A 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah is growing high at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California, United States on November 28, 2021. (Getty Images)

High in the arid mountain forests of eastern California there is a living tree that's older than the pyramids of Giza and the ancient city-state of Babylon, but its location is a secret.

Scientists believe the Methuselah tree, named after an especially long-living character in the Book of Genesis, is estimated to have started growing roughly 4,857 years ago in the White Mountains just north of Death Valley, according to The Independent.

That would put its germination date around 2,833 BC, nearly 3,000 years before the foundation of the Roman Empire and older than all Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Scientists believe it is either the oldest or second-oldest living tree known to humanity, excepting clonal colonies, in which individual trees live and die as part of the same ancient collective organism.

Even so, the Forest Service does not disclose the exact location of the Methuselah tree and has not marked it in any way, in order to protect it from vandalism.

Methuselah is the oldest known tree in the Methuselah Grove, which stands at nearly 10,000 ft above sea level in what is now Inyo National Forest.

It's a standout example of the Great Basin bristlecone pine, formally known as pinus longaeva. Because they are adapted to live in such harsh environments the trees are extraordinarily resilient and resistant to infection.

Through a process called “strip barking”, even a tiny sliver of the tree can remain alive after the rest expires, with thin strands of living matter twisting up through a dense shell of dead wood.

But bristlecone pines aren't the only arboreal survivors on Earth. Some scientists believe there is a Patagonian cypress tree in the rainy mountains of Chile that is around 5,400 years old.

Known as the Millennial Alerce, or sometimes Gran Abuelo (Spanish for “grandfather”), the tree's age was estimated using a new statistical method that is not yet broadly accepted among researchers, rather than by the traditional way of counting rings of wood within the trunk.

Clonal colonies — that is, groups of trees that have all sprouted off from the same ancient ancestor — can persist for many millennia, even as the individual trees live and die.