A month after Hamas militants from Gaza attacked an Israeli music festival last October, the Hebrew rap duo Ness & Stilla premiered “HarbuDarbu” on YouTube. The military ad celebrates Israeli forces waging war in Gaza and has drawn more than 25 million views; its critics have called the song brutal, hateful and anti-Palestinian “anthem of genocide.” “One, two, shoot!” thunders the chorus.
Despite demands from staff and activists to remove the song, “HarbuDarbu” was allowed to remain on YouTube. Crucially, YouTube determined that the song’s violent rhetoric was directed at Hamas, not the Palestinians as a whole, and that as a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, Hamas could be subject to hate speech without punishment, according to three people involved in YouTube’s content moderation or briefed on it but not authorized to discuss the matter.
In a closely watched decision on “HarbuDarbu,” YouTube’s trust and safety team consulted with executives and reviewed internal and external expert interpretations of the lyrics, which include slang and clever phrases of questionable meaning. The ultimate finding was that one of the song’s opening lines, which describes rodents emerging from tunnels, shows that the song is about Hamas (which regularly uses tunnels to navigate and hide in the Gaza Strip), and therefore does not qualify as hate speech, according to the sources.
The staffers who want the video removed say it should be considered hate speech because, they say, the text calls for violence against all Palestinians, mentioning Amalek, a biblical term used in history to describe Israel’s enemies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the term in a statement last October after the music festival tragedy, but his office later clarified that his intention was to invoke Hamas and not in any way call for genocide against Palestinians.
The justification for leaving the video unblocked, first reported here , is a prime example of what a handful of YouTube and Google employees who spoke to WIRED see as a pattern of inconsistent moderation of content related to Israel’s war on Hamas. The sources believe that management at the world’s most popular video platform is favoring and trying to justify removing content — or find exceptions to keep it up.
YouTube spokesman Jack Malon did not dispute WIRED’s reporting on “HarbuDarbu” and the other videos cited in the article. But he strongly disputes the accusations of bias and calls it misleading to draw broad conclusions about YouTube’s approach to enforcement based on “a few examples.” He adds that internal disagreements in such cases are common.
“We dispute the characterization that our response to this conflict has diverged from our established approach to major world events,” Malon says. “The suggestion that we apply our policies differently based on what religion or ethnicity is depicted in the content is simply not true. We have removed tens of thousands of videos since the beginning of this conflict. Some of these are difficult decisions, and we do not make them lightly, and we debate to achieve the right outcome.”
War Cry
While arguments about what should be on YouTube and other major social media sites have spilled out into the public eye before, the war in Gaza has made reaching an internal consensus on removing content nearly impossible, the sources say. Just as decisions about what should stay online are of great importance to the public’s response to the crisis that has left Israel on the brink of uncertainty and Gaza in ruins.
Sources tell WIRED they wanted to augment control over YouTube’s decision-making because they believe accountability has been circumscribed even internally. In the past, YouTube employees would summarize their logic to employees from other Google units in emails, chats, and phone calls. To avoid contentious discussions, that transparency has largely disappeared since October, the sources say. Malon says the flow of information has increased. But, as one source puts it, the essence is now missing: “Here’s the decision, let’s move on, let’s not dwell on it.”