“Why did you demonetize/restrict this video where I stand up for LGBT rights in the Middle East?” she wrote. Blaire White tweeted at YouTube on May 31st about a video where she reads letters from LGBT fans in the Middle East. Other trans YouTubers have run into similar problems as well since YouTube’s 2017 announcement that their systems were “not working as intended.” In April, creator Ty Turner tweeted that his channel received a strike after he vlogged about picking up testosterone that was prescribed to him. and every step of the way was fine UNTIL I added the word Transgender. I uploaded my video TWICE to see if the word "transgender" would trigger the algorithm. “I’ve done multiple tests in proving that the word transgender on my channels has demonetized my videos,” he says in one video. He suspects that some of these are the result of the platform’s algorithm for evaluating content as well as targeted flagging by anti-LGBT users. According to Ross, YouTube’s algorithm seems to be triggered by the word “trans” specifically to demonetize his videos.
In addition to his Trans 101 project, a 31-episode series that educates viewers about subjects like pronouns, terminology, and body dysphoria, Ross has also posted about his personal experiences transitioning. Ross, a YouTuber for about 12 years, creates videos touching on his personal experiences as a trans person, and the trans community as a whole. He says YouTube has regularly demonetized his videos with the word “trans” or “transgender” in the title - and even run anti-LGBT ads on some videos geared toward the LGBT community. In a series of videos posted to his YouTube channel, trans creator Chase Ross says that for the past three weeks he’s been dealing with age restrictions on his videos daily some of his older videos have been recently demonetized, or stripped of revenue-earning ads, with others being removed completely. Over a year later, however, the same problems persist. YouTube responded with posts in April and May of 2017 that said their system sometimes makes mistakes “in understanding context and nuances,” that Restricted Mode “ should not filter out content belonging to individuals or groups based on certain attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion or sexual orientation,” and promised to fix an engineering “issue” that had lead to the platform “unintentionally filtering content.” Last year, YouTubers such as Rowan Ellis, Tyler Oakley, Stevie Boebi, and NeonFiona spoke up about their content being hidden, demonetized, or age-gated. YouTube’s track record with LGBT creators isn’t great.