YouTube has officially prohibited videos that “promote or glorify Nazi ideology”.

In a blog last week, the video platform announced a new set of policies designed to combat hate speech.

“We're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status,” YouTube said in a statement.

“This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory.

“Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.”

YouTube was a signatory in last month’s Christchurch Call and committed to “taking specific measures to prevent the uploading and dissemination of extremist content on social media and other platforms”.

Previously, YouTube had been criticised for the way it handled white supremacist and other extremist content including videos that promoted conspiracy theories.

In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, spoke about the difficulty YouTube has with balancing user-generated content and the need for supporting truthful information.

“There’s nearly two billion people that come to our platform every month. Every one of them is coming for some unique reason, whether it’s the latest and greatest music video or a YouTube original, or their favourite creators,” Mohan said.

“I think when people come to YouTube looking for information, it has resulted in a shift in the way that we think about the responsibility of our platform.

“As a result of that shift, our product teams here are thinking of all of these solutions […] as a means of addressing that responsibility for making sure that when users are looking for information, YouTube is putting its best foot forward in terms of serving that information to them.

“But YouTube is also still keeping users in power, in terms of their intent and the information that they’re looking for.”

YouTube is one of Australia’s biggest social media platforms with roughly 15 million Australian visitors per month.