The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has called on YouTube and its parent company Google to do more to remove online videos that encourage gang violence and knife crime; and prevent them reappearing.
The mayoral knife crime strategy featured in the August 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine. The 41-page document said that ‘for long term change we need parents and families, schools and youth groups, and communities to come together to discourage and prevent knife carrying, as well as the media, businesses and other influencers to do their part’.
He complains that YouTube has refused to take down four violent videos reported to them by the Metropolitan Police since December. The videos depict gang members threatening and goading rival gangs, describing how they would murder them, making shooting hand signals and waving a Rambo knife to a soundtrack of violent rap.
Collectively, the videos have been viewed more than 356,000 times. Despite YouTube’s own rules stating that ‘threats, harassment, intimidation (and) inciting others to commit violent acts…are taken very seriously’ and the Met providing detailed context, the site claimed no breach had taken place. He points out that Google previously stated that it would not place adverts on videos that have fewer than 10,000 views in an attempt to discard extremist content. But all four videos reported by the Met have at least double, and in one case over 20 times this many views.
Sadiq Khan said: “Every death on the streets of London is an utter tragedy, and I am deeply concerned about the rise in knife crime across the capital. Social media and the internet can be used to inflame tensions and escalate violence quicker than ever before, and these videos are a shocking example of the glamorisation of gang culture.
“Internet giants have policies in place around violent content, but they do not go far enough. Google, YouTube and other platforms have a responsibility to the millions of young people using their sites every day, and it is vital that they toughen up their guidelines, remove breaches immediately and work with partners to help ensure such horrific videos do not reappear. Lives could depend on it.”
Pictured; City Hall from the north bank of the Thames.
