Super Chat: How YouTube and YouTubers Are Making Money Out of Hate

While hate-filled content has been given space on YouTube for a while now, the video sharing giants other features also help in spreading hatred and profiting from it. One such tool is Super Chat.

Super Chat is a feature on YouTube that allows viewers to pay to have their messages highlighted during a live stream.

Four months ago, YouTube creator Ajeet Bharti streamed a video live on YouTube. In it, he claimed that Muslims are conspiring and engaging in ‘love jihad’ against Hindu women. During the live stream, a person named Kumar Saurabh asked through Super Chat, “Can we form a group like the Ranveer Sena to fight against love jihad?”

The Ranveer Sena is known for committing atrocities against Dalits and is notably infamous for the massacre of Dalit communities in Bihar during 1990s.

‘Love jihad’ is a bogey peddled by Hindutva organisations who claim Muslims are engaged in a conversion plan and wish to convert Hindu women through marriage.

Bharti’s video is about a murder from Karnataka that he repeatedly refers to as having arisen from ‘love jihad’. However, the state police, the chief minister Siddaramaiah and later the state’ crime investigation department have all denied a communal angle to the killing.

Bharti’s live video, which was watched 107,000 times, goes against all of YouTube’s guidelines regarding sensitive, false, violent, and dangerous content. The Super Chat by Kumar Saurabh is also a violation of the violent and dangerous content policy of YouTube.

This Super Chat, which incites violence against Muslims, was purchased by Kumar Saurabh for Rs 40. Seventy percent of this amount (Rs 28) will go to the creator, Bharti, and 30% (Rs 12) will be taken by YouTube, as per the site’s rules. Kumar Saurabh’s was not the only Super Chat Bharti got – he earned approximately Rs 2,100 from Super Chats during this live stream. In another live video, which also violated hate speech and violent content guidelines, he got earned him up to Rs 14,000 from Super Chats.

Bharti is a well-known figure in Hindutva circles. He has around 639,000 subscribers on YouTube, 447,000 followers on X, and 265,000 followers on Instagram. Earlier he used to work at OpIndia, a Hindutva propaganda website.

An operation similar to Bharti’s is the infamous Sudarshan TV channel, which spreads hatred against Muslims in almost all its videos. YouTube has allowed the channel to exist, and allowed it to make money and also profits from its content.

Business model

Sudarshan TV’s hateful videos on YouTube run with advertisements from major brands like GoIbibo and Zomato, for which YouTube collects large sums of money and shares a portion with the creators. YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, says that such partnerships with creators are “good for business.”

In January 2017, YouTube launched Super Chat and Super Stickers. Any user can now pay money to make their comment or animated sticker appear in a larger font, with a distinctive colour and in an animated format. The word limit and the duration for which the comment will appear in the live chat depends on the amount paid. In India, Super Chat can be bought for amounts ranging from Rs 40 to Rs 10,000, depending on duration of visibility and length of the comment. The prices are set by YouTube.

Depending on the duration of visibility in the live comment section, the price range of a Super Sticker is from Rs 19 to Rs 10,000. This money gives privilege to a user to post animated stickers in the live running comment section. For instance, a sticker purchased for Rs 19 only changes in colour and size, while a sticker worth Rs 1,000 adds animation and stays for up for upto 30 minutes during a live video.

According to YouTube, any content on YouTube must follow the community guidelines. YouTube says that if a Super Chat violates these guidelines, it will be deleted, and the amount will be “donated to charity,” though there is no transparency about what kind of donation this entails.

Kumar Saurabh’s comment violates YouTube’s guidelines. This correspondent reported Kumar Saurabh’s comment twice on YouTube, but the Super Chat has still not been removed.

Super Chat allows ordinary citizens to directly interact with celebrities during a live streaming and get publicly noticed by a celebrity creator. A user can make provocative comments to grab the attention of the celebrity, and in the pursuit of money, celebrities may also make inflammatory remarks to engage viewers.

It is thus an easy tool for promoting extremism on religious, ethnic, and gender issues. The quickness of Super Chat gives it immense potential to promote extremist views.

One example of this is Bharti’s live video. “What is the solution to this murderous mentality? This will continue. How and when will it stop?” a Super Chat in Hindi, of Rs 100, comes from a viewer named Amit Mishra. It appears in a larger size and different colour from other comments. In response, Bharti generalises Muslim children studying in madrasas, calling them sexual offenders. “No, it won’t stop, Amit ji, this doesn’t stop. Because it’s a mentality. This is not an isolated incident…there was a madrasa in Moradabad, a child from there was caught… he was a small child, 7-8 years old, and he was doing something with a Hindu girl. When asked, he said the Maulvi teaches us to do this – if it’s a Hindu girl, bring her, and do dirty things with her,” Bharti says.

After that, Bharti calls Muslim men “violent” and madrasas “dangerous places”. The next Super Chat, worth about Rs 300, justifies Chinese president Xi Jinping’s actions against Uyghur Muslims in the country. In response, Bharti agrees, calling Xi’s approach the right one for eliminating “extremism.” There is substantial evidence of human rights abuses against Muslims in China.

A study by the Reuters Institute this year stated that around 50% of people in India get their news from social media, and 54% of them rely solely on YouTube. In such a case, YouTube’s accountability matters much more.

According to research reports, YouTube is unable to ensure that videos uploaded to its platform follow community guidelines. And a video can have hundreds of Super Chat comments. If YouTube is unable to enforce rules on a video, it is unlikely to be able to moderate its comments.

For instance, according to a report on the Sudarshan TV YouTube channel, there were about 25 videos violating guidelines. They were reported to YouTube, but no action was taken. Many of these videos, created during the Lok Sabha elections, spread hate and misinformation against the Muslim community, amassing over 3.5 million views.

According to YouTube’s Transparency Report, India has the highest number of videos violating guidelines. Between January and March 2024 alone, more than 26 lakh videos were removed. India has ranked first in this category for the last four years.

A research from Oxford University shows that YouTube and other social media platforms ignore hate speech, disinformation, and violent content coming from poorer countries, while enforcing stricter rules in developed countries.

Last year, cow vigilante Monu Manesar from Haryana, was accused of kidnapping two Muslim individuals and burning them alive. Monu was also a YouTube creator who had been posting violent videos for almost six years. In his videos, he would chase vehicles transporting cattle and fire shots at them. Several videos showed vehicles that were being chased crashing while trying to escape. He would capture and photograph himself with the injured individuals he caught. Monu had nearly 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, and the platform had awarded him a celebratory silver button for reaching 100,000 subscribers. Despite being reported by several Indian news outlets and fact-checking platforms, his channel was not removed. However, after a report by the New York-based news organisation, Coda Story, in February 2023, YouTube removed nine of Monu’s videos from his channel.

According to YouTube’s Transparency Report, between January and March 2024, YouTube removed over 144 crore comments worldwide for guideline violations. YouTube claims that 99% of these comments were identified and removed by the platform itself. Of these, 83.9% were spam, fraud, or misleading, while hate-filled and offensive comments were only 1.7%.

This correspondent reported the hate-filled comments on Bharti’s video to YouTube, but they were not removed. This suggests that YouTube does not necessarily identify hate comments on its own, nor does it remove them even after they are reported by a user. This could be due to YouTube’s technical incapacity, or because moderation of hate and polarising content is not a priority for the platform. The third possibility is that hate and polarisation are profitable for YouTube.

The quarterly Transparency Report does not mention anything about Super Chat at all. YouTube does not provide data on how many Super Chats have been removed for guideline violations, or about the sum of money received by Youtube as penalty it has levied on Super Chat buyers as a result of violation of its guidelines. It also, crucially, has nothing about the nature of charity they are doing with the above penalty money.

This correspondent has sent several questions to YouTube regarding Super Chat, but the company did not give specific answers to any question. No action has been taken on Bharti’s video or Kumar Saurabh’s ‘love jihad’ Super Chat yet. YouTube says they are reviewing both.

However, it stated, “We have created several tools through which any creator can control live chat in their live video. A regular user can also flag any inappropriate Super Chat, meaning they can report that the Super Chat is inappropriate.”

In addition to the options available to users and creators, YouTube, says about its accountability as a platform: “If our smart detection system identifies any inappropriate Super Chat, we stop the purchase before it is completed.”

But the violent and hateful Super Chats this correspondent reported were not only not identified by YouTube, but even after reporting, they were not removed. The Wire has also sent questions to Ajeet Bharti but has received no response.

This article first appeared on The Wire Hindi and has been translated by Naushin Rehman and Vipul Kumar.