To commemorate Black History Month, YouTube sent out a tweet Wednesday encouraging people to subscribe to African-American content creators on their site — a message that was met with immense backlash on social media.
“Roses are red. Violets are blue. Subscribe to black creators,” YouTube tweeted. The self-broadcasting platform had even changed its profile picture on Twitter to read “#MakeBlackHistory.”
YouTube’s post, which was aimed to boost channels run by black YouTubers, did not go down well with social media users. People started chastising the site for promoting skin color over the quality of content. Many even went as far as saying that YouTube was racist for favoring content creators with a specific skin color over those with lighter skin.
In reply to YouTube’s tweet, one user wrote: “If it said subscribe to white creators, or any other skin color it would be deemed racist. why is this okay? subscribe to all great creators, and stop dividing our contemporary society further by using skin color as a driving factor. we are all human at the end of the day.”
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