Responsibilities down the Tube
One of the many things which frighten me about YouTube is the knowledge that anyone and everyone can view the videos posted on the website. Unfortunately, hundreds of people have lost their jobs, been rejected or kicked out of schools and universities as a result of the videos they have posted on YouTube, namely, the police officer in the blog ‘YouTube Video Leads to Officer Suspension’. As a social network YouTube has responsibilities. These responsibilities include censoring videos which they believe to be inappropriate and/or insulting. However, in most cases YouTube have failed to censor or remove such videos leading to unfortunate conclusions.
Additionally, there are numerous amounts of violent content on YouTube which can be viewed and copied by people of all ages. For example, there are videos of ‘happy slaps’ and rape attacks which can encourage people to replicate what they are watching. There were videos of teenagers ‘bus surfing’ – clinging on to the back of a bus – which thankfully were removed as a result of complaints. However, the termination of such unsuitable videos are generally unlikely; in this case the complainers were lucky.
Other footage such as Saddam Hussein’s execution – which has never been televised – is available on YouTube. This baffles me as not only is this footage extremely disturbing (who wants to watch someone being executed?) but why would it be posted on YouTube and not on TV? There must be a reason why it wasn’t published on TV. Also, it’s not advisable to have such content so easily available to everyone.
YouTube need to start taking on their responsibilities because if they don’t sooner or later the website will be out of control.
March 5, 2008 at 11:37 am
The fact that not only was the Saddam Hussein execution available on YouTube, it has been viewed literally millions of times – what does this teach us… a couple of things… YouTube has started to take over, with the execution being the first example of something that TV declined, and the Internet said ‘no problem’. This is a problem that will only get worse over time unless the owners are held accountable for the footage being uploaded to the site.
A more worrying trend is that YouTube gives people ‘what they want’. Unfortunately, it seems that the world we inhabit ‘want’ rape, bullying, death, pornography, racism, gun glorification, propaganda, consipary theories, Jackass re-enactments etc. etc.
Yes Pepsi and Mentos was funny and it’s nice to see that music video I love, but at what price?
March 16, 2008 at 7:35 pm
[...] Down the Tube After reading a comment by Jack on my post ‘Responsibilities down the Tube’ I realised that a lot of the points he was making were very [...]