Google and YouTube's social media platforms are being used by gangs and individuals to spread toxic and hateful content that is aimed at inciting violence on the streets of the UK. Drill music in particular is becoming a vehicle used to brag about stabbings and killings and to threaten the lives of rivals, daring each other to bring the fight to the streets. Videos have been made by killers who mock the mothers of children they have killed, where they brag about killing teens, even revisiting the site of the murder to boast about it.

Social media is an integral part of the lives of today's young people, and there is a great deal of research into social media being a catalyst to youth violence. Youth violence and social media are so deeply entwined that experts have stressed that youth workers need to be trained in social media in order to be at all effective in helping prevent youth violence.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266553944_Social_media_as_a_vector_for_youth_violence_A_review_of_the_literature

(PDF) Social media as a vector for youth violence: A review of the literature - ResearchGate | Share and discover research

PDF | On Jun 1, 2014, Desmond Upton Patton and others published Social media as a vector for youth violence: A review of the literature

www.researchgate.net

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/02/social-media-violence-young-people-gangs-say-experts

Social media related to violence by young people, say experts | Society | The Guardian

Youth workers should be given training sessions on the link between social media and violence, experts have told the Guardian, amid warnings that gangs are increasingly using social media sites to ...

www.theguardian.com

YouTube and Google have a responsibility to the public to review the content of videos being uploaded to their platform and prevent toxic content from being disseminated. The harm being done by these videos to our community can be seen by simply reading the comments, the amount of threats, hatred, and incitement of violence is disturbing. The same way they have targeted terrorist content, they need to target gang and youth violence content.

While YouTube has admitted that they are aware of the problem, they have taken no action to put a stop to this problem. We need to make it clear to them that we are adamant that they act immediately to stop this. The problem of youth violence is a puzzle with many pieces, and while we know that this action alone will not put an end to youth violence, it is an important piece of that puzzle that Operation Shutdown is attacking, one piece at a time.

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