Fixing YouTube in 2010

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Guest Contributor

When religious fundies go after a YouTube video about science/religion by downvoting it or “flagging” it, the website has done a dismal job of letting the video stay up.

That means it’s remarkably easy to get a video taken down for no reason other than it’s offensive to some religious person. It’s pathetic and YouTube needs to address the issue.

AndromedasWake has a video up explaining the problem and how you can help:

If you have a spare minute and a Google account, go here and star the thread.

And everyone can sign the petition. (I tried it earlier and my signature wasn’t appearing on the list, but it may be working now.)

(Thanks to Leo for the link!)

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  • Scott

    I already signed the petition, and I hope more people go and help out.

  • http://atheistcamel.blogspot.com/ Dromedary Hump

    Done, Done, and forwarded to my list.
    Thanks for this info.

  • http://religiouscomics.net Jeff

    I did my civic duty.

  • http://whoreofalltheearth.blogspot.com Whore of All the Earth

    Starred, signed and shared!

  • http://blog.anti-theist.co.uk Dan

    Done & twittered @antireligion

  • MH

    Starred and signed.

  • Epistaxis

    This site looks like it’s for submitting bug reports, not petitions. Isn’t there a more appropriate way to do this?

  • We Are The 801

    Thou shalt not bear false witness

    Such blatant hypocrisy makes me want to convert right now!

    Thanks for posting this!

  • http://ecstathy.blogspot.com efrique

    The site doesn’t look like the right place for this kind of petition.

  • The Other Tom

    This is actually pretty straightforward to fix. IIRC, federal law provides protection for companies providing services on the net to the public in an unrestricted manner, as long as they don’t censor the postings based on content, and comply with DMCA takedown notices. This is called “Safe Harbor” protection.

    If Youtube is censoring content that religious people don’t like, then they’ve lost their safe harbor protection. So, find something someone said on youtube that is actionable, and sue youtube for it. They’ll try to claim they have safe harbor protection, you show that they are censoring based on content and so they don’t, and they lose. They’ll get REALLY interested in not censoring content REALLY fast.

  • Raskolnikov

    Anyway, the whole flagging system should be removed. The cases were reconduction of videos is really needed are much much rarer than such a flagging system would let believe.

  • http://www.youtube.com/djarm67 djarm67

    Thanks so much for your support on this initiative.

    DJ

  • dkahn400

    Petition signed, thread commented and starred. Well, that’s my bit of slacktivism for the day. :-)

  • http://www.liveleak.com/user/ChockFullOfNuts ChockFullOfNuts

    That’s why I don’t use YouTube – the community sucks, and moderation is often inappropriate.

    Much of my time is spent here:
    http://www.liveleak.com/

    You wont get banned for being an atheist!

  • http://www.leagueofreason.co.uk/youtube/liberalviewer-to-discuss-copyright-and-fair-use-at-vidcon/ LiberalViewer to discuss Copyright and Fair Use at VidCon « League of Reason

    [...] I posted two videos on the subject. The first received widespread attention thanks to Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula) but despite remaining the top “technical issue”, Google have [...]

  • Blaze

    Sadly, it’s not just atheists that are getting affected by this. It’s mostly ranters who are getting suspended, my favorite ranter He11sing920 will get suspended shortly. We have to make Google listen, I’m not giving up, we have to get the accounts that were unfairly suspended back on YouTube.