YouTube has taken down about 30 music videos deemed excessively “violent,” following a request from the U.K.’s most senior police officer.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has blamed some of the videos on the platform for glamorizing gun violence and criminal activity and laid focus on Drill music. The genre originated in South Side of Chicago with one of the biggest hits coming from Chief Keef in the form of his single ‘I Don’t Like‘.
Drill Music has also found popularity in the U.K. with most of the output coming from artists belonging to socioeconomically-deprived neighborhoods. Authorities in the U.K. have asked to take down 50-60 videos and about 30 of them have been deleted already. They are blaming the videos for surge in murders and violent crime lately in London.
“The gangs try to outrival each other with the filming and content – what looks like a music video can actually contain explicit language with gangs threatening each other,” the Metropolitan Police’s Mike West said, reports BBC. “There are gestures of violence, with hand signals suggesting they are firing weapons and graphic descriptions of what they would do to each other,” he continued.
A YouTube spokesman has released the following statement: “We have developed policies specifically to help tackle videos related to knife crime in the UK and are continuing to work constructively with experts on this issue. Along with others in the UK, we share the deep concern about this issue and do not want our platform used to incite violence.”
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