YouTube sued over alleged discrimination

A group of LGBT video creators have filed a lawsuit accusing YouTube of discrimination, alleging that the site concealed their content, limited their ability to sell ads and pared down their subscribers.

In a suit filed Tuesday in a federal court in San Jose, Calif., against YouTube and its parent company, Google, a group of LGBT creators accuse the video platform of “unlawful content regulation, distribution, and monetization practices that stigmatize, restrict, block, demonetize, and financially harm the LGBTQ+ Plaintiffs and the greater LGBTQ+ Community.”

The suit, filed by five LGBT creators, alleges that the site does not recommend or promote content that is linked to “tag words” related to the LGBT community, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, causing them to lose advertising revenue.

The complaint goes on to accuse Google of using its “monopoly power over content regulation to selectively apply their rules and restrictions in a manner that allowed them to gain an unfair advantage over YouTubers, to profit from their own content to the detriment of its consumers.”