YouTube Accused Of Censorship 522
writes "According to WorldNetDaily, Youtube is engaging in censorship. A quote from the article summarizes well:
The popular video-sharing YouTube site, which is being purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, limited access to a political ad that mocks the Clinton administration's policy on North Korea, but contains no profanity, nudity or other factors generally thought objectionable." It's also worth pointing out that WorldNetDaily could be described as just wee bit conservative
censoring (Score:2, Funny)
YouTube is censoring Slashdot now, too! Aieyeeee!
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What is objectionable in one person's opinion is just entertaining in another person's opinion.
Yeah, I generally prefer to filter out content that doesn't contain profanity and nudity.
Re:objectionable? (Score:4, Informative)
First, censoring is more than just putting up a warning that the content might not be suitable for certain viewers, which is all YouTube did, according to TFA.
Second, also according to TFA, the warning was automatically added once someone offended by the content flagged it as offensive. The warning wasn't permanent, but was just tacked on until YouTube could have a real person review the video to check if it was accurately flagged. Once reviewed, the warning could removed, left in place, or the video could be deleted.
When I just went to watch, there was no warning. This means either the video got to the head of the review queue by normal processes and was determined to have been improperly flagged, or the tempest in a teapot got it jumped to the head of the queue where the determination was made.
As for users flagging it as offensive... I made a political joke in one post at Slashdot and had so many people hitting it with downmods and upmods, I lost my posting privileges for three weeks (a "timeout") for getting too many downmods in a specific time period (almost all from that ONE post). So it's VERY believable that enough left-leaning people would flag such a video as offensive as to trip whatever limit was needed to get the warning placed. I'm also sure something equally offensive to right-leaning people would be equally flagged.
But in the long run, the warning gets on, the video goes into a reviewing queue, and a human at YouTube eventually reviews it. But with the size of their staff, the size of their traffic, and the potential number of videos getting flagged daily, it's highly probable that they'd take a couple of days for it to reach the top of the queue.
Seems that this is more a deliberate publicity ploy. By fooling people who don't actually pay close attention to the facts, they made it sound like the video was unfairly censored by YouTube itself (or its staff) as opposed to going through a standard process. Then those people, with a sense of moral outrage, tell everyone they know... getting the video hundreds of thousands of future viewings.
- Greg
YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not YouTube per say, it's people flagging the video as inappropriate. That causes the restriction to be put on. Once YouTube became aware of that, they immediately removed the warning. I just watched the video on YouTube.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:4, Insightful)
"It's also worth pointing out that WorldNetDaily could be described as just wee bit conservative"
Was this comment absolutely necessary or even relevant to the story? Has free speach suddenly become restricted for a person that is "just a wee bit" one way or the other? The entire point of the accusation of censorship is that any speech at any level was moderated.
Certainly YouTube has rules - no sexually explicit content, fine. But I just read their terms of use and I don't see anything about moderation of content that may be a "wee bit conservative."
Then again, it's like mods on Slashdot (which I believe may have been at least a part of the point of the parent post) which is that given the ability to moderate, people will always mod down speech they don't agree with, completely disregarding said person or organization's absolute right to say it.
Disappointing indeed that the "flagged" content wasn't reviewed by YouTube and simply left be, being that it doesn't violate the terms of use of the site.
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Kim Jong Il has admitted he never followed the agreement that gave him billions of dollars and nuclear components, paid for by American citizens.
You simply cannot negotiate with these people (dictators). It simply doesn't work.
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Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:4, Informative)
Not that I totally disagree, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Do you have a better idea? Do you propose restarting the war? What stick could be wielded (as opposed to the carrot)?
he bombed Iraq without accomplishing anything other than expending the US cruise missile arsenal and killing lots of innocent people
Are you kidding? He kept Saddam nuetered. The Clinton enforced no fly zones (enforced by the bombings you speak of) allowed the formation of an independant kurdish government, the very sa
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"The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets w
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Interesting)
YouTube - or its viewership - has been blocking videos critical of Islam, terrorism, etc but has hosted Hamas propaganda without comment. One incites violence, the other does not.
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Informative)
Was this comment absolutely necessary or even relevant to the story? Has free speach suddenly become restricted for a person that is "just a wee bit" one way or the other? The entire point of the accusation of censorship is that any speech at any level was moderated.
It is a tenet of critical reading skills. We always teach our students to "consider the source" when reading and "consider the audience" when writing. Giving the reader a heads-up about any historical political bias is a legitimate act.
I fail to see how free speech has been restricted as you appear to imply. They said it and anybody can read it. If any source has a history of being a wingnut, of any persuasion, policital or otherwise, then potential readers will benefit from knowing.
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Insightful)
If any source has a history of being a wingnut, of any persuasion, policital or otherwise, then potential readers will benefit from knowing.
Because a tenet of critical reading skills is to pigeonhole your source, so you can predict what they're going to say in advance. That saves the grubby annoying trouble of deciding for yourself the trustworthiness of the source by, say, examining multiple samples of the source's work.
I know I'm awfully grateful when someone points out the heretics for me in advance.
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Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:4, Informative)
You're right. As I am sure its an unbiased site, lets take a sampling of other headlines from this wonderful site:
Why liberals channel Lucifer
- By Kevin McCullough
The underestimated communicator
- By David Limbaugh
(Pro bush article)
More talk won't stop nuclear Iran
- By Jerome Corsi
And regarding the video (did you even watch it?), it was just complete flamebait and should have been blocked. I mean it was from the director of scary movie, aka fart jokes for 10 year olds.. His political intelligence obviously hasnt matured much beyond that.
Do you also hate it when people forwarn you about going to goatse links? Or would you prefer that goatse wasn't "pigeonholled"?
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:4, Insightful)
However, it is also worth pointing out the pervasive hypocrisy. For example, during all the instantiations of Robert A Kennedy's election conspiracy theories, the +5 modded comments have taught us the error of judging the validity of content by the politics of the source. But when anybody who has committed the grievous error of being conservative has anything to say, we learn about the essentials of using knowledge of bias to sieve information.
In short, people only care about logical fallacies when they're not amicable to their own personal cause.
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Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was any other year besides an election year nobody would care. But since the political karma is high this season, everyone's quick to cry "censorship".
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Maryrose, of The YouTube Team, said if any video viewer flags a video as inappropriate, it is forwarded to a queue for the company's customer support team to review."
Basically, the WorldNetDaily either is too stupid to understand what happened or is ignoring facts. Either way, it raises questions about their competence and/or honesty. If they are stupid or dishonest about this, then what else are they wrong about?
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Funny)
Man, that's got to be a good job. Sitting around all day looking at movies that people have marked as porn.
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"However, after a brief period of accessibility, the verification page started appearing on YouTube. It asked that: "This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community. To view this video, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in or signing up." Today the verification page on the spoof was removed."
I then checked the YouTube Terms of Use; please note Item C
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If I create a document with the text "Bush sucks!" and someone drags it to the recycle bin on my windows
Anti-Piracy options compared to Censorship (Score:3, Informative)
A technology designed to detect copyright material could give YouTube a needed dose of legal legitimacy and calm any concerns Google Inc. has about spending $1.65 billion on the Internet video site. But that same technology could hurt YouTube's edgy appeal.
While YouTube is known as the place to find almost any kind of video clip, recent agreements with h
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So it's like people at digg burying a story as 'inaccurate' when the don't agree with the content of the story? Or the mods at Slashdot moderating a post as 'Troll' when they don't agree?
And by the way, I never thought I would see a WorldNetDaily story on Slashdot's front page. I'm looking out my window for flying pigs. I can't wait to see what this thread devolves to.
That's just a working theory, not a fact (Score:2)
If the answer was as simple as the user community flagging the video, why don't they just say that?
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Simple facts are that there has been a whole series of conservative posters having their content removed and or being banned from YouTube. When you look at what was banned you find out that anything containing political speech from the conservative point of view is getting nailed.
So that is suppression of political speech which is supported by the reporting system in place at YouTube.
They may have re-igni
Wrong wrong wrong and wrong (Score:3, Informative)
So once again, nothing to see here, please move along.
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If they did this without having a review process that causes each flagging to be reviewed so n
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where? I saw it and saw satire and comedy, but nothing outright dishonest. If you disagree with it, does that make it a lie?
There are lot of people who are more disturbed by slander than nudity.
And these are the same people screaming for tolerence and free speech.
Re:YouTube Is Not Censoring Dumb @ss! (Score:5, Funny)
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I'll save this post as a memento.
-Eric
Good or Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good, possibly, if they are pandering to their target audience to maximize viewership. You don't get equal time on the Daily Show either.
And yeah, I'm one of those conservative folks who was annoyed by this; but hey, its a entertainment site.
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This is no more censorship than any webforum anywhere on the Internet. Certain things are allowed, other things aren't.
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Funny that these conservatives never seem to object to the right-wing bias of the private talk radio industry (which even goes out over public radio spectrum).
-Eric
Re:Good or Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
What bias of the INDUSTRY are you talking about? Let's not be disingenuous here. Liberals have all the opportunities conservatives do to field talk shows. I've heard them on the air, actually. Several of them.
The problem you have to face is that talk radio, like any other radio format (except perhaps NPR, which shows quite a liberal leaning most of the time), is a BUSINESS. The talkers must gain an audience and keep it, so that the stations can sell advertising.
A factual analysis of the liberal attempts at talk radio show that they just don't make money. It seems there is less of a market for liberals bashing of conservatives than most liberals would care to admit.
One last point: those airwaves are not really public - the stations, via their broadcast license, "owns" a frequency in their market. It's misleading to act like this is analogous to "conservatives can stand on the public street corner and say what they want, but liberals cannot." As I opened my reply, liberal talk show hosts have the same opportunities in the business conservative ones do.
Re:Good or Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
The probably people have with Rush isn't his political stance, it's that he has no trouble lying, and other people repeat these lies.
Seriously, I've listened to him a few times, and, when he talked about stuff I knew about, he was either objectively lying, or at a minimum misrepresenting things. When I say 'misrepresenting' I mean, not in a subjective 'agree to disagree' way, doing shit like comparing 'How many X' there are in two different sized populations, and 'forgetting' to mention that one population was three times the size of another. I'm sorry, but that's lying.
There are at least three ways of being biased: You can selectively report the triumphs of your side and the failures of the other side, you can misrepresent the truth by clever wording and manipulation of facts, and you can lie about actual facts.
All political commentary does the first one. More and more, I see the second done, sometimes by the liberal side, more often by the conservative, but it's possible I'm biased. Either way, I tend to stop listening to such people when I realize they'll say anything that's 'technically' true, no matter how much it misleads people.
But people like Rush, who actually make up facts? Like his recent assertation that the Foley emails were 'planted by a liberal' and that you need abortions to get embryonic stem cells and that Clinton was down to a 20 approval rating at one point and other such inanities. That's way past 'biased' and into 'lying'. Those aren't even vaguely, under any defination, true.
Thinking Rush is 'biased' is part of the problem. He's not presenting an unfair view of reality. He's not presenting reality at all, he's just lying. Not only that, it's been repeatedly documented. Al Franken got a whole book out of it.
Also he says horribly offensive with regard to race and gender, but that's not 'biased' per se, and if people actually like to listen to that, I have no problem with it. WRT the lies, however, I wish someone would sue him for slander.
Uhm. Yeah. (Score:2)
bogus (Score:5, Informative)
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If that is the case, then no problem. According to the article the a video is flagged only when a YouTube employee reviews the video - at the request of the community - and decides that it should be flagged. Do you have any references that say the article got it wrong?
Assuming
Re:bogus (Score:5, Informative)
NYTimes - "A Slippery Slope of Censorship at YouTube" [nytimes.com]
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Also, according to the article, the flagging was removed before the article was actually posted on the website. That is, the author and editors knew that YouTube wasn't censoring the content and wrote an article about how they were censoring the content anyway. If that's doesn't show dishonesty and a complete lack of journalistic integrity, I don't know what does.
It's be like if a liberal news site po
Re:bogus (Score:4, Insightful)
And plenty of posts in this thread have been moderated inappropriately, with "overrated" and "flamebait" and "offtopic" tags used on this that are merely alternate viewpoints.
I don't blame
Watch it (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know about anyone else, but that video is very persuasive. Its intelligent and serious perspective on the issues has made me realise how the current situation with North Korea is actually the fault of the Democrats. I suggest everyone watches it to see the quality of discourse on the Republican side of this debate.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
There is no constitution on the Internet. There is no free speech. There is only the right to say whatever the hell you want, and hope someone will listen to you. If they don't, too bad.
That said, I don't approve of censoring anything. I think it's cowardly and serves no real purpose other than to shield people from things they may not necessarily want to be shielded from. But it IS the right of youtube to chose what they want to have on their site, and what the don't want. Obviously, they don't want people being overly political. That's their call.
Deal with it.
Ah, so it didn't employ any "good censorship" (Score:2)
Yes, it's important that we only censor based on one arbitrary set of factors than a different arbitrary set of factors.
So? (Score:2)
The video is highly critical of the USA, but I don't see anything inappropriate in it.
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It is interesting to contrast the intelligent, clear discourse of Pinter's lecture with the Benny Hill style of that political advertisement.
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wee bit? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, like Charles Manson was a wee bit disturbed.
hrm (Score:2, Insightful)
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The other side said the same about Clinton. This particular "debate" boils down to whether or not you like the guy because he is in your political side (or against your political side).
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profanity and nudity (Score:2)
Personally I don't think they should be censoring anything.
maybe it was the comments not the video (Score:2)
YouTube Censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
Like Slashdot could be described as just a wee bit liberal?
Oxdung (Score:2)
WorldNetDaily lying? Say it ain't so! (Score:2, Insightful)
Tyrany of the Majority (Score:4, Insightful)
Censoring is a Govm Thing . . . (Score:5, Informative)
It is scrubbing for Google merger. (Score:3, Informative)
They have banned several Conservative video makers, including Michelle Malkin and HotAir. They have done so recently, despite carrying the videos for over a year without any issues.
Now, Google, the company that bought them, has refused to carry Michelle, LFG, and others as NEWS sites based on the fact that they blog, not present new news. Here are the letters from Google:
And LGF:
BUT they allow several other blogs to be indexed as news, as Charles from LGF points out:
Other sites of questionable news worthyness but indexed as news: Democratic Underground, Uruknet.info, and Dailykos.
Now if you want to hold yourself out as a "News" indexing service that only indexes news and claim no bias, you have serious issues. Lets point out that Google donates almost exclusively to Democrat candidates and causes and you have a clear bias.
A clear bias when you claim to have none is a problem
I am resonably convinced, barring YouTube or Google coming out and saying it, that they scrubbed the videos as part of the merger deal. As in, no scrub, no deal.
Source for above info: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001431.htm [michellemalkin.com] . Yes yes, she is involved and has an axe to grind, but she also puts together the facts nicely.
Censorship? (Score:3, Interesting)
Subjective "Reporting" (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, after reading this, I must say that this is more an opinionated editorial than an objective piece of news. I'm shocked that
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Re:Subjective "Reporting" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm shocked that
Again, to reiterate the GP's post, WND is not a reputable news source because it's conservative?
You can call this an opinion piece if you'd like, but stating FACTS like the video was available for viewing on YouTube is reporting, not editorial. From the FTA:
limited access to a political ad that mocks the Clinton administration's policy on North Korea, but contains no profanity, nudity or other factors generally thought objectionable. What in that statement is OPINION?
Further into the article, we get:
"However, after a brief period of accessibility, the verification page started appearing on YouTube. It asked that: "This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community. To view this video, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in or signing up." Today the verification page on the spoof was removed."
I have to say, that seems like some decent FACTUAL reporting.
(1) They state that the verification page was present due to USERS ratings.
(2) The point out that the verification page has been removed.
Your choice of insult for WND is unwarranted.
Re:Subjective "Reporting" (Score:5, Informative)
"Perfectly OK to show our soldiers getting killed, but they'll be damned if they allow that anti-democrat ad," added "Spaceman Spiff" in a "Newsbusters online dialogue. "This [is] very scary to me. However, not surprising. But, now that they are owned by Google, we'll certainly be seeing a lot more of this censoring."
let's see this quote from the article
Sheffield said he believes the intention of YouTube's "censorship squad" was to limit access. Even though the same video may be available somewhere else, such as the Drudge Report, "lots of non-political and moderate folks don't read Drudge, but they might hear about the video from a friend and try to look it up in the search engine, only to be foiled in their attempts to decide whether it was truly 'objectionable.'"
and another gem of reporting
Bloggers also reported that the Council on American Islamic Relations has in the past taken steps to have anti-radical Islamist videos pulled from the YouTube site, and Malkin said she was told her video was pulled because it was "inappropriate."
This article is an opinion piece, it looks nothing like a factual article. It uses quotes form unknown bloggers as evidence. It presents only one side of the story. It does not try for even a second to be objective. For a factual article, it does not know when the movie was posted, how long it was freely availble, how long it was restricted and when it came unrestricted again. It makes a big deal out of nothing because youtubes policy is to investigate after someone marks a video as objectionable. These idiots would be all over youtube if they ran a different policy because children could be potentially exposed to nudity.
This article is about a censorship that is not even a censorship but the normal processes at google. This article simply attempts to resell the story to the American public that the media has liberal bias.
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They definitely managed to get a lot more PR than such a tiny, silly, thing deserved.
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When someone who is politically motivated makes an assertion that is not true, then their opinion on the matter has no value.
It's not what I would call a "liberal party line" it's more a "human beings with an ounce of common sense line".
Of course, if you don't like it you are free to go with the conservative party line that it's all a conspiracy by "the liberal media".
It's also worth pointing out... (Score:5, Insightful)
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OK, I've already posted something on this thread that'll make me unpopular, so why stop now?
being conservative != greed
To a conservative, wanting to take someone else's money is being greedy. To a liberal, wanting to keep your own money is being greedy.
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Either to flame the liberals to come out and say "yeah right, curse you WND."
Or to flame (those few) conservatives on
If I may paraphrse the GP, I'll now ask YOU: if you don't toe the party line here on
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Wal-mart is censoring movies and music. CBS, NBC and ABC are censoring TV. ClearChannel is censoring the radio. Barnes and Noble is censoring authors. AT&T is censoring the phone system. Albertsons is censoring food distributors.
Nyah nyah! Boil blood, boil!
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From you-know-where [wikipedia.org]:
"Censorship is the control of speech and other forms of human expression. In many (but not all) cases, it is exercised by governing bodies."
Re:Slashdot accused of censorship? (Score:4, Funny)
Mod parent DOWN! (Score:2)
100% censorship free is not only impossible, its not acceptable. I'm not saying we should be censoring things we don't agree with, but its inevitable that things considered offensive will eventually be censored by the community in one form or another. Remember, just because you have free speech doesn't mean you get to stick it in my face.
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If Slashdot has become a government rather than a privately-owned web site since the last time I looked, please correct me here.
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Re:Slashdot accused of censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know, I avoid political things on
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Re:Slashdot accused of censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if you don't see any Microsoft apologists on this website, even browsing at +4, you are not paying attention at all. In general there is an anti-MS bias around here, but if you open your eyes you'll find the dissenting opinions.
On behalf of slashdotters with a clue, thank you for contributing to the dilution of a perfectly good word. Henceforth, let's associate "censorship" to mean "viewing threshold" on a stupid interbutts forum. That way, when REAL censorship happens, nobody will care.
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Re:Slashdot accused of censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot accused of censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Censorship is the removal of material. Moderated comments are never removed but "removed from view" depending on your personal settings. However the comments are still there.
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Hmm...
I know, cheap shot, but it was too easy.
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You might think my comments are a little extreme, but here's a transcript from Politically Incorrect [cygnus-study.com] where Ann Coulter specifically states women shouldn't be allowed to vote because they tend to vote for Democrats.
Re:This will probably be considered flame bait but (Score:2)
If
You need look no further (Score:2)
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Here on
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Why did "liberal" become an insult? I'll tell you. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called context, shit-for-brains. It's like if some pro-alien-invasion newspaper said that NASA was hiding information about aliens. You would think differently about it if the Wall St. Journal said the same, thing, no? It's still up to the reader to decide if the information is reputable or not. You'll notice that the editor's comment simply says that the article comes from a periodical