June 12, 2024

Dear Rapporteurs and Independent Experts,

Thank you for your recent correspondence sent pursuant to the communications procedure of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council. We express our sincerest apologies for a clerical error that inadvertently resulted in a lack of formal response to your earlier outreach.

We take our responsibility to respect human rights across all of our services very seriously, and we appreciate the opportunity to discuss Google’s approach to removing hate speech and preventing its spread on our platforms. Below you will find information on our cross-company efforts to uphold international human rights standards, as well as details about specific content-related policies and processes.

1. Google's Commitment to Civil and Human Rights

In everything we do, including launching new products and expanding our operations around the globe, we are guided by internationally recognized human rights standards. We are committed to respecting the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementing treaties, as well as upholding the standards established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and in the Global Network Initiative Principles (GNI Principles)...

... 2. Google’s Policies Prohibiting Hate Speech and Harassment

There is no place for hate speech on any of Google’s services, and we have strong policies in place prohibiting such content. Google’s Terms of Service include “basic rules of conduct” for users and apply to each service listed here. Those Terms prohibit users from abusing or harming others, including by bullying or harassment. Many of Google’s services also have service-specific policies prohibiting abusive content, and a list of many of those service-specific content policies is available here. These policies are tailored to specific services and may differ to reflect variations across products...

...3. Enforcing Our Hate Speech and Harassment Policies

Hate speech is a complex policy area to enforce at scale, as decisions require nuanced understanding of local languages and contexts. To help us consistently enforce our policies, we work with subject matter experts across multiple languages. We also deploy machine learning to better detect potentially hateful content to send for human review, applying lessons from our enforcement against other types of content, like violent extremism...

... 4. Promoting Responsible AI

Google is committed to the responsible development and use of AI, including protecting against bias. In 2018, we announced Google’s AI Principles, which govern our research and product development and impact our business decisions in this area. Specifically, Google believes AI should: be socially beneficial; avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias; be built and tested for safety; be accountable to people; incorporate privacy design principles; uphold high standards of scientific excellence; and be made available for uses that accord with these principles....

...5. Providing Researchers Access to YouTube Data

At Google, we believe it is important to provide meaningful transparency and to work with researchers studying YouTube. In July of 2021, we launched a new initiative for researchers affiliated with accredited, higher-education institutions that supports research-specific access to YouTube’s global Data API...

... 6. Advertising

With respect to your specific question regarding ads, we have strict ads policies and advertiser friendly guidelines that govern the types of ads and advertisers we allow on our platforms and the YouTube content that we allow to monetize. For ads, we do not allow ads on our platform that incite hatred against, promote discrimination of, or disparage an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, or nationality (Dangerous and Derogatory Content Policy). We also prohibit ads on our platform that contain violent language, gruesome or disgusting imagery, or graphic images or accounts of physical trauma (Shocking Content Policy)...

... 7. Google's Response to the Israel-Hamas Conflict

We are committed to ensuring that YouTube remains a safe space for our users, creators, and partners following the attack in Israel on October 7th and during the ensuing conflict in Gaza. Content moderation on our platforms is a critical focus of our efforts toward these ends. As noted above, hate speech such as content targeting any religious or ethnic communities is not allowed on our products that host user-generated content. As of April 30, 2024, YouTube had removed more than 110,000 videos, terminated more than 5,000 channels, and removed more than 160 million comments specific to these events. In addition, we demonetized over 300,000 videos for violating our Advertiser Friendly Guidelines on violence, terrorism, and sensitive events, and age-gated thousands of videos not appropriate for viewers under 18.

8. Conclusion

Google is proud of the work we have done to protect our users and maintain safe and trusted services, but we recognize that our work is never done. We will continue to learn and to improve our services while being guided by our belief in technology’s power and potential to have a profoundly positive impact across the world...