Star Wars fans beg YouTube to look into channels profiting off hate speech

Members of the online Star Wars fandom are calling on YouTube to look into channels that appear to be making money off of hate speech and harassment.

The statement, linked below, is currently being shared around social media platforms such as X (Formerly Twitter) specifrically tagging YouTube Support asking for help.

"Enough is enough," part of the statement reads. "The Star Wars fandom demands that YouTube enforce its community guidelines" (specifically guidelines related to targeted harassment and hate speech.

The statement names specific channels and evidence of such harassment and hate speech, but does not ask that such channels be removed from the platform. Rather, the statement demands that YouTube enforce its guidelines and demonetize the channels and videos that are generating ad revenue for creators for content that falls under the platform's promised consequences.

The YouTube Support account on Twitter has responded to many of these posts with a generic set of instructions for reporting videos that violate the platform's policies, though many have claimed that reporting hate speech and harassment on YouTube has not resulted in the consequences the platform's policies promise it should.

Though ongoing harassment and hate speech in the fandom has been an ongoing problem for quite some time, things escalated recently when actor Amandla Stenberg posted an Instagram Story addressing the cancellation of The Acolyte on Disney+. In the video, the actor became transparent about the harassment those involved in the show received before it even released -- and, unsurprisingly, this resulted in even more harassment.

"There has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced," Stenberg said. "We started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language toward us.”

The YouTube-specific responses to these words sparked outrage in the fandom, and not just in the videos making money. Fans online, fed up with the hateful responses to Stenberg and those within the fandom, are demanding YouTube do something to stop incentivizing such behavior.

Whether or not the requested actions will be taken is, at this point, up to YouTube.