YouTube apologizes after removing anti-feminist videos from the game "Red Dead Redemption 2

Video games are common punches, but it has caused the ink to run unusually, to the point of stirring the international press and procrastination of YouTube. In a short video released Oct. 28, a YouTube user, Shirrako, films his interaction with a secondary character in the game Red Dead Redemption 2, which portrays an outlaw in the United States from 1899 This is a suffragette, but instead of agreeing to help him as prompted by the game, he chooses to beat her. Entitled Beating Up Annoying Feminist, she has been seen more than a million times and sparked heated debate in the world of video games.

Following the controversy, including relayed by The Guardian, YouTube first closed the account on Wednesday, November 7 and removed its 8,000 videos, before backing on the night of November 7 to 8, ultimately estimating that these did not break his rules. "The videos were reevaluated, and we determined that they had to be age-restricted, as they do not violate our terms of use," Ryan Wyatt, video game content manager, said on Twitter. from YouTube.

He evokes in this regard a "mistake" of moderation:

"Sometimes we make mistakes, that's why we have a guide that helps moderators make difficult decisions and allows creators to appeal. We will discuss with the moderator the consequences of his decision and ways to avoid repeating this error. "

The suspension of account much criticized

The initial removal of the channel has earned YouTube the virulent criticism of youtubeurs Anglo-Saxon video games, as video maker Keem. He had questioned the platform on Twitter to remind him of the purely fictional character of Red Dead Redemption 2, a video game that generally incites to kill hundreds of virtual characters, men or women, without anyone émeuve.

The games of the Anglo-Saxon studio Rockstar Games, authors of the hit series Grand Theft Auto and this Red Dead Redemption 2, are famous for the total freedom they offer the player, and opportunities for interaction sometimes sulphurous or cynical .

As The Guardian recalls, it was already possible in GTA V to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them to get the money back. If the scenario of Red Dead Redemption 2 tries to value more than its previous opus minorities, it also offers the usual freedom to brutalize them.

The same Shirrako had put on line dozens of other extracts in which he strikes a Chinese character, escorts a Mexican to the border or delivers another feminist to the alligators. He also films himself killing an Adolf Hitler look-alike and riding a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Fund of antifeminism

YouTube's original decision was particularly criticized by the likes of GamerGate, a movement of video game players flirting with the American far right, known for its violent anti-feminist and anti-"politically correct" positions, supporters of permissive video games, and whose ideas have been democratized in recent years.

The video of Shirrako had thus elicited many delighted comments from its subscribers. "It makes me feel bad because it was the time when women were fighting for real rights, but it's still fun," says a netizen hostile to contemporary feminism. "13,000 people who do not like video? There are computers in the kitchen now? Another quipped, playing on the stereotype of women in the kitchen. Like him, many Internet users were delighted with the excitement provoked by this video, especially with feminist activists, pejoratively nicknamed SJW ("social justice warriors" or "warriors of social justice").

Since 2014 and the appearance of GamerGate, the issue of women's representation and the active political role of games regularly divides players, and has contributed to the rise of a new masculinism. In a second video called "Throwing a Feminist in Hell," Shirrako tied the suffragette this time with a lasso, took her to a cave and threw her into a precipice, before lighting a cigarette.