By Vipul Kumar
While hate-filled content has been given space on YouTube for a while now, the video sharing giants other features also help in spreading hatred and profiting from it. One such tool is Super Chat.
Super Chat is a feature on YouTube that allows viewers to pay to have their messages highlighted during a live stream.
Four months ago, YouTube creator Ajeet Bharti streamed a video live on YouTube. In it, he claimed that Muslims are conspiring and engaging in ‘love jihad’ against Hindu women. During the live stream, a person named Kumar Saurabh asked through Super Chat, “Can we form a group like the Ranveer Sena to fight against love jihad?”
The Ranveer Sena is known for committing atrocities against Dalits and is notably infamous for the massacre of Dalit communities in Bihar during 1990s.
‘Love jihad’ is a bogey peddled by Hindutva organisations who claim Muslims are engaged in a conversion plan and wish to convert Hindu women through marriage.
Bharti’s video is about a murder from Karnataka that he repeatedly refers to as having arisen from ‘love jihad’. However, the state police, the chief minister Siddaramaiah and later the state’ crime investigation department have all denied a communal angle to the killing.
Bharti’s live video, which was watched 107,000 times, goes against all of YouTube’s guidelines regarding sensitive, false, violent, and dangerous content. The Super Chat by Kumar Saurabh is also a violation of the violent and dangerous content policy of YouTube.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
