YouTube’s Community Guidelines: Is YouTube Failing to Enforce Their Policies Related to Disinformation and Misinformation and Why? On The Grossman Files with Manny Grossman.
Edited 17-Nov-2024
*To listen to the blog, please press the play button located at the top of the blog.
YouTube is one of the largest social media platforms for video content in the world. When interacting with their video platform as an end user, we have come to expect that they will ensure a safe and constructive online environment. The guidelines YouTube advertises to the end user include the ability to report and YouTube to remove sexual content, violent or repulsive content, hateful or abusive content, harassment or bullying, harmful or dangerous acts, misinformation, child abuse, promotion terrorism, as well as spam and misleading information. While a significant amount of evidence has been collected that YouTube is failing to uphold their community guidelines, the author of this blog will only use one example: The Grossman Files with Manny Grossman. It is the author’s wish that community members of YouTube began to document failure to adhere to community guidelines, failure for YouTube to remove content, and appropriately report the issues to the Better Business Bureau to raise awareness of the problem. As a society, we should not tolerate certain behaviors, especially when they are in direct violation with community policies.
The author will beging with an overview of YouTube’s community standards.
Sexual Content and Nudity
Because YouTube’s audience is broad, including men and women under the age of 18-years old, the platform has strict policies related to sexual content. The platform does not allow for pornography of nudity unless it serves education, artistic, and scientific purposes. For example: Videos published for sexual health are permitted if the published material is not exploitative. Another example, a home sex video or sex pictures, constituted as revenge porn and illegal in at least 30 states, would not be allowed on their platform because it places the victim at risk for emotional trauma and YouTube at risk for litigation.
Violent or Repulsive Content
YouTube does not allow for content to glorify or to incite harm on others. YouTube should remove published content that displays acts of violence because the material is disturbing and shocking. YouTube’s definition of violent content is broad: staged violence as well as real violence. But YouTube does allow for violence if it is published as educational content, as a documentary, or if it discusses historical conflicts. Yet, YouTube also requires sensitivity when publishing these matters. For example, YouTube would not allow videos that encourage vigilantism or comments that suggest vigilantism is appropriate.
Hateful or Abusive Content
YouTube has a strict policy related to hate speech, language that promotes discrimination (e.g. race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation), as well as violence towards others. The platform is designed to protect end users from harmful interactions that can lead to physical and psychological damage.
YouTube also promotes to remove content that targets specific individuals with harmful messages and those that degrade their character. These include messages that harass, insult, demean, and bully. This applies to content providers on the platform as well. Through their reporting mechanisms, it allows end users to report the behavior.
Harassment or Bullying
Because bullying is a growing epidemic, YouTube attempts to facilitate a platform that allows the end user to feel safe and secure in their homes and elsewhere when engaging in video content, reading messages, and posting messages. They do not allow for content directed at individuals or groups that target with insults, threats, and doxing. Doxing is defined as the release of personal, private information.
Their policy is put into place to prevent others from inciting from and engaging in harassment due to the process intentionally inflicting emotional distress with malicious intent. By putting this policy into place, it prevents YouTube from being litigated for allowing for cyberbullying on their platform. They recognize that the impact of such statements negatively affects mental health and overall wellbeing, leading to hospitalization and potential suicide attempts. Attempts to ruin an individual’s or group’s reputation, when accusations are not substanitated by fact, are removed from the platform. YouTube provides users with the ability to block and to hide abusive comments on their videos if the feedback provided is not constructive criticism.
Harmful or Dangerous Acts
YouTube strictly prohibits content that promotes harmful and dangerous acts: dangerous challenges, risky behavior, and other activities that could lead to injury and death. Because YouTube has a broad audience, and audience members under 18-years old, it protects these viewers from making poor life choices. For example, the MTV series “Jackass” would not be allowed on their platform.
Misinformation
YouTube has tried in recent years due to the spread of misinformation and disinformation on the internet to combat the problem. Particularly, they focus on removing false public health information that places community members at risk of diseases, material that can influence election outcomes, and other various information that alters public perception. YouTube does not allow for content that promotes unfounded conspiracy and that misleads the public related to global events. For example, YouTube would not be tolerant of a content provider stating the holocaust was a hoax or advocating that he or she was pro-Mussolini and pro-Hitler.
Child Abuse
YouTube does not allow for content which promotes child abuse, exploitation of minors, or endangering others. YouTube works closely with law enforcement agencies, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, if there is an indication of child abuse. And exception to this rule would be documentaries on human trafficking, criminal cases, and other educational material geared towards educating the public about child abuse.
Terrorism
You Tube does not allow for content which promotes terrorist activities, extremism, supports terrorists’ organizations, or promotes terrorist propaganda. Videos that glorify these acts on YouTube are promptly removed as well as content. YouTube does not want videos published that promote extremist ideologies. For example, if a YouTube content provider or someone who posted a message stating he or she had hopes Vladamir Putin would invade the United States, YouTube would not tolerate the content and would immediately remove it.
Spam and Misleading Practices
YouTube also has strict policies related to spam, misleading content, and does not tolerate their platform being used to manipulate the perception of others, known as propaganda. They do not allow any content that boosts views artificially, boosts like and decreases dislikes, the use of comments to alter perception about the validity of content, and other indicators of deception and fraud. Clickbait is subject to heavy penalties, including, but not limited to, removing the video and banning the user from YouTube permanently.
What is Disinformation?
While many in the United States are not familiar with the term, disinformation is a Russian concept which is defined as the deliberate intent to deceive and to manipulate public opinion. In Russian, disinformation means “duck”. This manipulation is employed usually through political tactics, military strategy, and other types of covert operational strategies such as propaganda. Disinformation is distinctly different from misinformation due to the intentional spread of information that is dishonest rather than being an error.
In Russian, disinformation became a part of their strategy during the cold war; it influences domestic and foreign perception and affairs. The disinformation spread by the Russian government was state sponsored, was aimed to alter public perception, to sow discord, to undermine trust in democracy, which was in Russia’s interest as well as their allies.
One key feature of disinformation is the use of media and digital platforms to disseminate fake news, propaganda, social media manipulation, and to censor and to suppress opposing viewpoints.
For more information on the subject of disinformation, please purchase “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism” by Prof. Ronald J. Rychlak, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, et al.
For more information on their policies, please visit .
The Grossman Files and David Berkowitz
Several days ago, the author published an article entitled, “Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Wendy Savino, The Grossman Files, the NYPD, Politics, the Mafia, David Berkowitz, and the Sons of Sam on Medium.
In this blog, the author discussed David Berkowitz’s lease application, a non-binding contract, and his warrant for non-payment on his lease following his arrest. As quoted in the article:
“During the interrogation, David Berkowitz was told they believed he had a 14-day missing period where he was living out of his vehicle. They were told this piece of information based on The Grossman Files erroneous research; the detectives failed to properly investigate internal police documents that they could have gained access to, and it appears they failed to request FBI documents. If they had accessed documents, they would have found that David Berkowitz completed and signed a lease application for his Pine apartment on 27-Mar-76, was approved on 30-Mar, and had a tentative move-in-date on 15-Apr-76. In no way is a lease application a binding lease agreement.”
Several days following the article, The Grossman Files posted on their community page, erroneously, that the lease application was a lease agreement.
Manny Grossman, a gardner by trade who entered into Son of Sam research to “scratch an artistic itch,” is the content provider on YouTube and the faceman for the podcast. Several sources allege a relative of the Grossman Files is associated with PR work for law enforcement and the Department of Corrections in the state of New York.
For more information related to the allegations, please watch Rotting jewels by Donna Harris on YouTube. And for more information on the Wendy Savino case, please watch EsotericAtlanta, “Wendy Savino: Son of Sam Conspiracy” with Brice, Mike, and Frank.
The Grossman Files selectively edited out the remainder of the document, only showing their audience a fraction of the application. Since then, the author edited the original blog, included the lease application, to demonstrate that The Grossman Files has cropped and edited the lease application agreement. As the readers of this blog can see, by the sample provided by the Grossman Files, it is the same document: the writing matches, the verbiage of the lease application matches, and there are numbers that were written that correspond to the lease application.
For more information on the legalities of lease applications, please go to
Moreover, on 17-Nov-2024, The Grossman Files made a community post revealing access to new documents on David Berkowiz. On the post, The Grossman Files failed to edit out his social security number and date of birth because the government entity that provided the documents failed to redact his personal information. Revealing personal identifying material, if done through a data breach, has serious consequences for citizens. It creates the ability for criminals to apply for credit: lease agreements, bank accounts, revolving loans, and installment loans. Being incarcerated is no exception to the rule in regards to credit fraud. And, it presents a whole new obstacle due to obstacles to overcome in the dispute process. Inmates do not have access to the internet for starters.
The community posts have been reported to YouTube and by numerous viewers and documented, it appears YouTube has failed to remove the posts on their own, although it does appear the lease application post was proactively removed by The Grossman Files on or around 15-Nov-2024. Moreover, there are reports of end users leaving constructive criticism, notifying The Grossman Files that their team of researchers posted the lease application and did not post the entire agreement.
Not only has Grossman Files not acknowledged the mistakes publicly, but The Grossman Files also suppressed comments and thumbs down by end users of YouTube’s social media platform. This was troubleshooted and solved by numerous community members who created two accounts: one with the original comment post and another without it. It was discovered that although the comments were recorded under one account with visibility, the other account showed no comments. This also applied to thumbs down. Examples of screen prints are still being collected by the author of this blog for YouTube to examine.
Abuse of YouTube’s community policies should not be tolerated. YouTube should actively enforce their policies to protect their audience. It is the author’s wish that end users of YouTube actively monitor video content, feedback left, and document it accordingly to bring the problem to YouTube’s attention. While this is one isolated incident, obviously, The Grossman Files would to be the only content provider abusing YouTube community standards.
To file a complaint against YouTube, please go to .
YouTube has had over 8700 complaints in the last 3 years, although the nature of all the complaints is not known.
*Note: The author of this blog is writing with anonymity. Any attempt to publish personal information about the author, including name, will be referred for legal recourse.
