(credit: Rego Korosi)
YouTube and Google have some explaining to do to the government of the United Kingdom. According to a report by UK publication The Times, government-funded advertising has appeared in front of extremist videos on YouTube. The UK government has summoned Google to explain why taxpayer funded-advertising was allowed to roll on videos by “rape apologists, anti-Semites, and banned hate preachers.”
The Times found that these advertisements resulted in payouts for extremist YouTube creators, including American white nationalist David Duke and Holocaust-denying fundamentalist pastor Steven Anderson, who praised the killing of 49 people in the Pulse nightclub terror attack. The Times’ investigation revealed videos from these and other extremist creators included ads from the Home Office, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, Transport for London, and the BBC.
The UK’s Cabinet Office now has a temporary restriction on YouTube advertising until it’s reassured that those messages can be “delivered in a safe and appropriate way.” According to the BBC, The Guardian, Channel 4, and the BBC itself have also pulled advertising from YouTube. This comes after the UK government decided to move away from TV advertising and focus more funding on digital advertising on outlets like YouTube, with the Cabinet Office saying these outlets are a “cost-effective” way of reaching mass audiences.
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