Civil rights groups plan YouTube boycott if site won’t ban Trump

United States civil rights groups will organise an advertiser boycott against Alphabet’s YouTube if it does not remove President Donald Trump’s channel, the groups told the Reuters news agency.

Jim Steyer, one of the organisers of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign which led more than 1,000 advertisers to boycott Facebook in July, said the groups are demanding YouTube take down Trump’s verified YouTube channel, which has 2.76 million subscribers.

YouTube is the last major tech company that has not banned Trump from posting on its platforms. Facebook, Twitter and Snap Inc have all blocked Trump after supporters of the president stormed the US Capitol last week, leading to five deaths.

Trump’s YouTube channel gives him the opportunity to continue spreading false information that the US election was stolen, Steyer said.

On Tuesday, Trump’s verified YouTube channel posted eight new videos.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

YouTube has told the groups it is considering the demands but has yet to act, Steyer said.

“If YouTube does not agree with us and join the other platforms in banning Trump, we’re going to go to the advertisers,” he added.

“We join in with our coalition partners and ask that YouTube act decisively to help stop the spread of hate by shutting Trump’s account down,” said the NAACP in a statement to Reuters.

The NAACP, Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change along with Steyer’s group Common Sense Media, are among the organisers of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which had recruited important advertisers including Verizon Communications and Unilever to pull their ads from Facebook due to hate speech concerns.