YouTube has removed the account of 14-year-old far-right creator Soph after violating the platform’s Community Guidelines for the third time in 90 days, BuzzFeed News reported .
Following the ban, Soph sent a quickly-deleted tweet saying “youtube headquarters here I come,” while posing with a gun that BuzzFeed News described as an “assault rifle.” She later tweeted that the gun tweet was “obviously a joke.”
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Before the ban, Soph had attracted more than 800,000 subscribers who tuned in to see her racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBTQ rants.
YouTube’s ban came in response to an anti-LGBTQ video called “Pride and Prejudice” Soph posted on July 31, which reportedly included a series of threats at the end, as well as telling her followers to “make sure to blame me in your manifestos,” referring to the documents posted online to sites like 8chan by mass shooters.
YouTube deemed it a violation of their policies against hate speech and in accordance with its strike system, Soph’s account was terminated.
Soph had obviously run afoul of YouTube’s policies and guidelines before.
Earlier in the year, Soph responded to YouTube’s deactivation of comments on her channel — as YouTube did for all videos with children in response to a network of child exploitation — by threatening YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
“Susan, I’ve known your address since last summer,” she said. “I’ve got a Luger and a mitochondrial disease. I don’t care if I live. Why should I care if you live or your children? I just called an Uber. You’ve got about seven minutes left to draft up a will…I’m coming for you, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
That earned her a temporary suspension, and her videos were demonetized.
Police investigated the threat as well, but determined it wasn’t credible because she didn’t have access to any firearms, KRON reported. Soph said it was all in the name of satire.
“They also had to launch I guess a formal investigation against the satirical threats I made against the CEO of YouTube,” she said in an interview, according to KPIX 5 . “YouTube and law enforcement work closely together and they have to take those sorts of things seriously.”
YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, was the site of a shooting in 2018.
In that case, a disgruntled 39-year-old YouTuber angered by the company’s filter change that reduced her income from her videos drove from San Diego, entered the YouTube campus, and shot and wounded three people before turning the gun on herself.
Apart from the “joke” threat, Soph seems to have largely tried to shrug off the ban.
“jokes aside, nothing of value was lost,” she tweeted . “there’ll be less people watching — their loss, the ones subscribed to the patreon will continue getting their money’s worth.”
“personally, less viewers is no biggie,” she continued.
“youtube is the fast food of media, it thrives off convenience, not the quality of its service, but if it upsets you because you want my ideas to be broadcasted as much as possible, send complaint emails, do what you have to.”
Patreon shut down Soph’s account the day after YouTube did, but she still has her Twitter account and one with alternative website BitChute.
h/t: BuzzFeed News , KPIX 5
Last Updated on August 6, 2019 by Ryan Ford
