YouTube Featured Graphic Videos By Accused Philly-Area Criminals. How?

PHILADELPHIA — Two recent high-profile crime incidents in the Philadelphia area included disturbing content shared on YouTube by two people accused of serious crimes, leading to questions of how the videos were handled by the platform.

Anigar Monsee, 28, of Upper Darby, is accused of abusing animals on YouTube, with PETA saying the videos were shared for the sexual gratification of viewers. She was charged with four felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals.

And Justin Mohn, 32, of Levittown, uploaded a 14-minute video showing his father's severed head to YouTube about a week after Monsee was charged. He has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with his father's death.

PETA's Emergency Response Team Director Kristin Rickman said it's unlikely Monsee's videos were never reported to YouTube since they began being posted, and said if they were reported, the sheer amount of content uploaded to the platform likely lead to reports being missed by content moderation protocols.

"The video being up so long was incredibly concerning," Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said of Mohn's video. "It was quite horrifying how many views it received before being taken down."

The video was viewed more than 5,000 times before being taken down by YouTube at around 10:30 p.m. after being posted about five hours earlier.

"YouTube has strict policies prohibiting graphic violence and violent extremism. The video was removed for violating our graphic violence policy and Justin Mohn's channel was terminated in line with our violent extremism policies," YouTube said in a statement. "Our teams are closely tracking to remove any re-uploads of the video."

Patch reached out to YouTube's parent company Google to inquire about the videos and how such graphic content was featured on the video platform for so long. However, no one from Google responded to emails about the videos and moderation practices.

According to YouTube, violent or graphic content includes, in part, "footage of corpses with massive injuries, such as severed limbs," as well as "content that glorifies or promotes serious neglect, mistreatment, or harm toward animals."

YouTube's full content policy is available online here.

The videos posted by Ansee and Mohn clearly violate these content policies, yet the videos remained available for varying periods of time.

"We enforce these Community Guidelines using a combination of human reviewers and machine learning, and apply them to everyone equally—regardless of the subject or the creator’s background, political viewpoint, position, or affiliation," YouTube's website reads.

What is in question are the moderation practices for videos that threaten revenue streams from copyright holders, and the moderation practices for videos depicting graphic content.

YouTube's critics, including many content creators on the platform, have alleged it heavily targets videos for removal due to copyright issues.

In 2021, the company released a report on copyright violation-related takedowns against videos, saying "the vast majority of claims and removal requests originated from automatic detection technology."

Additionally, users can manually report videos and channels to YouTube online here.

However, 2.2 million copyright takedowns from January 2021 to June 2021 were reversed, allowing the videos in question to be reinstated on the platform.

In 2020, YouTube in response to a content creator's claim his video was erroneously removed on the grounds of depicting graphic content claimed "over-enforcement" of its policies.

"Our policies aim to make YouTube a safer community while still giving creators the freedom to share a broad range of experiences and perspectives," YouTube's website reads.

A 2023 report by the group Tech Transparency Project found that the platform "recommended hundreds of videos about guns and gun violence to accounts for boys interested in video games."

"Some of the recommended videos gave instructions on how to convert guns into automatic weapons or depicted school shootings," the group said in its report. "Many of the videos violated YouTube’s own policies on firearms, violence, and child safety, and YouTube took no apparent steps to age-restrict them."