YouTube Suspends Egyptian Anti-Torture Activist's Account
from the unintended-consequences dept
YouTube is catching a lot of flack for suspending the account of an Egyptian activist who had captured evidence of police brutality on video and uploaded it to the site. YouTube's "community guidelines" state that "graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed" on YouTube. Apparently, that includes graphic or gratuitous violence perpetrated by governments against innocent civilians. I have to say I don't understand why YouTube goes to so much trouble to censor "objectionable" content. If the goal is to keep such materials away from children, there are effective ways to do that without censoring the material altogether. Flickr, for example, permits pornographic photographs to be uploaded to its site, but it restricts access to them in various ways that helps prevent children from inadvertently stumbling across them. YouTube should be able to implement a similar system. Instead of deleting objectionable content, it should flag it as objectionable. Objectionable content might not show up on the home page or in the default search results. It might also require clicking through a warning page before viewing it. But it's hard to see what purpose is served by deleting the content entirely. The content will be posted somewhere else, where someone else will derive advertising revenue from it. And in the process, YouTube is inadvertently giving the impression that it is helping oppressive governments squelch criticism of their regimes.
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Filed Under: activists, egypt, objectionable content, videos
Companies: google, youtube
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What good does it do anyway? If people want to see it, they'll just find a different route to view it (sounds like someone on techdirt, I know)
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It's all about consistency
Maybe they will put up an 18+ gate for such materials, but this seems more like principle than principal.
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You just defeated your own argument.....
I'm not saying it should be a 'kids only' YouTube. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with 'you have to draw the line somewhere'. Better them then the government screwing it up by meaningless, bipartisan, compromising, legislation that does nothing close to it's original intent.
They're not "squelching" anything and everybody knows it.
Like you said, "The content will be posted somewhere else, where someone else will derive advertising revenue from it...". We will all see it there, squelch-free.
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Re: You just defeated your own argument.....
Then who wrote that first paragraph if not you? Because that's sure what it sounds like. That's kind of like the guy who says "I don't like (insert race)" and then follows it up with "But I'm not racist". Yeah, right.
Everybody knows no such thing. They certainly are "squelching" this video.
But not on YouTube, because they squelched it. Luckily, Google doesn't control all such sites, just the largest.
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Re: Re: You just defeated your own argument.....
My point, boldly missed by Coward:
There are bad extremes to be suggested on both ends of this issue. Both need to be avoided for the likes of YouTube. They can't allow everything or censor everything in the mainstream.
"Everybody knows no such thing. They certainly are "squelching" this video."
EVERYBODY computer savy enough to be reading THIS blog can and will find it if they wish to, hence my statement. Any effort on YouTube's part to suppress is fruitless in regards to this audience.
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Re: Re: Re: You just defeated your own argument...
Said the guy who hit his thumb with the hammer: I meant to do that! Just making a point!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: You just defeated your own argumen
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Google has a verification process
So, Google has a method for making sure only "qualified" people view "bad" content. Then, the problem becomes, "Great, now Google knows what videos I'm into." They probably already know everything about me, now, so they could verify that I'm over 18, etc.
So, Google is deleting videos it considers offensive. One thing you should be able to do is make a YouTube video highlighting your plight. Say in the video where the original content can be found, and tag your new video with the same tags as the old one.
Google should be able to handle a little self-criticism. And if *that* video gets deleted, then we know that Google is censoring political speech, and not just uniformly deleting violent material.
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RE: You just defeated your own argument.....
They also wouldn't have to pay for the finding/deleting them.
It was simply about the economics.
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Like what he was posting is not known
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I expect more from TechDirt
What a statement like that does when taken within the context of th article and the rest of your post is try to connect the guy being an activist against torture to him being suspended from YouTube as cause and effect. I'm sure there are a lot of sheep out there that won't realize these two things are NOT cause and effect. However, I've come to expect much higher standards from TechDirt and I find it disappointing to see something like that here.
He broke YouTube's rules and got suspended. The end. That the video in question was of torture is only relevant in that a video featuring torture, whether against torture or for it, is a blatant violation of YouTube's policies. Noble cause or not he violated the TOS he agreed to when he signed up and for that he got suspend.
Kudos to the guy for trying to save humanity from itself but he needs to be respectful of the parties who are enabling him to do so. YouTube doesn't give a crap about torture. YouTube isn't a political entity. YouTube is a corporate entity and like other corporate entities its primary interest is in making money.
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Re: I expect more from TechDirt
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so its OK
nice
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Re: so its OK
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iv had to put a password in to youtube
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This is evidence of brutal suppression of civilians and techdirt -from the land of the free- is worried about who gets the advertising revenue !.
We're not going to be free much longer.
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Re:
We're not going to be free much longer."
LMAO. Seems noone gives a crap if someone is tortured or not, as long as they can squabble over who gets the revenue.
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DeluTube
you can sometimes retrieve deleted YouTube vidoes form this online archive site
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EVERYBODY computer savy enough to be reading THIS blog can and will find it if they wish to, hence my statement. Any effort on YouTube's part to suppress is fruitless in regards to this audience."
I don't care if the 12 yo neighbor kid sees porn as long as he doesn't access it from my house.
Simply concept youtube wants to remain in the middle. Plenty of places we can see the other stuff including google. You tube lets you cuss your heart out can't do that even on this blog (I'm guessing )
do i dare test it? . . . ah. . . . . POOP!! (run mike . . . runaway)
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Re:
Google simply doesn't want to offend the Egyptian government by opposing torture.
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