King 810’s Music Categorized as ‘Hate Speech’ by YouTube
Recently, King 810's 2014 music video for "Killem All" was removed from YouTube. This came as a surprise to the band, who took to social media to comment on the song being removed, revealing that YouTube's reason for removal was that the video qualified as "hate speech."
“Logged into @youtube this morning to this tragedy. Youtube claiming to encourage free speech but removing content they arbitrarily pin as 'hate speech.'" frontman David Gunn wrote on Instagram (seen below). "This is music and artistic expression. The song and video are social commentary. Youtube you would not even exist as a company if they removed all things anyone may consider ‘hate speech.’ We as a people have made this a very large very rich company. I understand this is a for profit company with a policy and an agenda but its a bit dangerous when giants like Youtube and @google censor information and art only to expose us to cherry picked pieces consistent with their own views. Especially when we rely on them from day to day. This is something people should be aware and concerned about.”
Looking at the song's lyrics, it's difficult to determine how the track could be considered "hate speech." King 810's vocabulary as a band is rooted in violence, and of course, the song itself has violent undertones, but the lyrics do not appear to be directed at a specific group of people.
Eventually, YouTube returned the video to the service, and as of yet King 810 have not commented on the video's return, and whether or not YouTube reached out after the fact. Recently, YouTube has frequently demonetized videos that would otherwise fly under the radar, and it might be a result of accidental machinations of their bots.
Update 1/16 3:45 PM: Frontman David Gunn recently commented on the return to YouTube stating, “The authoritarians at YouTube have put our Killem All video back up with an age restriction. We all know the science doesn’t support this as an effective solution and you have to wonder if this would’ve went another way had we not the influence or means we do. Either way this is all we can ask for. Thanks y’all."
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