My Own Video Was Just Deleted From YouTube

The next thing you know, PETA and the Catholic League will join forces to censor videos involving animal crackers.

OMFSM, you mentioned cracker on this site.

I predict this thread will soon have 234900975 responses.

All this censorship somewhat proves the religious are wrong.

Of course, YouTube has the right to allow or disallow anything it wants. It can also lose its dominant place in its niche. If it’s going to delete something every time somebody complains, there won’t be anything at all soon enough.

Okay.

This is getting ridiculous. They’re essentially taking down any anti-religion video that gets posted.

We need to start a protest campaign. How does one write to YouTube to give feedback? Their site doesn’t exactly make it obvious. They do have a phone number, though… maybe we should just start calling…

Crackers are serious business.

And also: why are you atheists always picking on the Catholics? What did they ever do to you? It’s persecution, I say!

Whoa, wait…we’re suppose to use A&W…all these years I was using the cheap store brand stuff… does that make me a generic atheist?

The next thing you know, those dirty communistic video-posting atheists will be lynching Catholics and punching the Pope…while wearing condoms. All while Bill Donahue, the beacon of rationality, pleads for tolerance.

Now, stepping off the slippery slope, I don’t know how they could sincerely come up with a justification for removing the video that Hemant describes. Censoring a simulated desecration of a normal cracker has even less justification than censoring an actual desecration (which is very near zero already). If it is anything like the wafergate mindset, they probably justify this reaction by saying that showing disrespect for magical, functionally worthless symbols is akin to a “hate crime” (lol). And, even if the cracker wasn’t enchanted, or wasn’t even the right the kind of cracker, just the mere act of pretending that it is makes it equivalent to the actual act, since, for these people, pretend and actual have no distinctions.

I don’t know what we should do. Should we continue to show depraved, amoral contempt for their enchanted wafers as continued protest to their insistence that such an action is equivalent to actual expressions of hate for their group, or should we just collectively give up and stop feeding their persecution complexes? Well, either way it goes down, I look forward to the actions and reactions. Personally, I am rooting for the path that involves more smashed crackers. But, then again, that’s easy for me to say, since I don’t intend on getting off my ass and doing it myself. So…a matter of future interest, I suppose…

If YouTube wants to kiss the asses of everybody who complains, let them. They’ll just lose business. Censorship is self-defeating. Nobody is too big to be immune to competition. Right now somebody who is hungrier and has more gonads is planning a video posting server that will not have the flagging nonsense. Post whatever you want. Don’t like what you see? Don’t watch! Who the hell are you to stop me from saying and hearing whatever I please?

YouTube publishes its Community Guidelines here.

They preface with:

We’re not asking for the kind of respect reserved for nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons. We mean don’t abuse the site. Every cool new community feature on YouTube involves a certain level of trust. We trust you to be responsible, and millions of users respect that trust. Please be one of them.
Don’t Cross the Line

Then they list what they call “common-sense rules” that will help users “steer clear of trouble,” and for the most part I agree, prohibiting porn, shock stuff like accident scenes, unlawful material or copyright violations. One of the rules is this: (emphasis mine)

* We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

They conclude with this:

We Enforce These Guidelines
Okay, this one is more about us than you. YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When they do, we remove them. Sometimes a video doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines, but may not be appropriate for everyone. These videos may be age-restricted. Accounts are penalized for Community Guidelines violations and serious or repeated violations can lead to account termination. If your account is terminated, you won’t be allowed to create any new accounts. For more information about how the Community Guidelines are enforced and the consequences of violating them, please visit the Help Center.

I was unable to find any more specific criteria for these guidelines, specifically what they mean by “attack or demean.” That is so broad, vague and subjective that it allows any staff reviewer to censor entrirely by their personal agenda. “Disagree” to one person can be “attack” to another person. “Spoof” to one is “demean” to another. I found nothing about peer review for decisions to delete material. Is there staff discussion on these decisions? Once one YouTube reviewer decides something is over the line is that it? Maybe YouTube staff member Joe Truebeliever has the graveyard shift and he considers it his personal crusade to protect his creed from any and all “attacks” or “demeaning” in his opinion.

I’m on the West coast so it’s not so late as it looks on the blog clock. 😉

It’s kinda funny that the company that based itself on “NOT being evil” (google) bought out youtube then started censoring everything on it.

So now google is so big (it’s probably worth more than all the banks in America) it can’t afford to upset all those religious nutjobs (and a few cranky big time musos). yeah right!

Does anyone have any real proof that this is a conscious effort by YouTube to censor? I really doubt it. Like I said before, this looks to me like lots of religious nitwits flagging these videos and getting them taken down automatically for review.

Once they’re reviewed, I’m pretty confident they’ll be put back up. If they’re not and there’s an actual response from YouTube (to a private query or in a public way) acknowledging the censorship, then I’ll believe they’ve gone “evil” – and until then, I’m skeptical.

If someone filed a false DMCA notice, file a reply with YouTube. Then head to EFF.org and get more info on what you should do next.