Memorial Day is always a backwards looking holiday, but reading How Terrorists Slip Beheading Videos Past YouTube’s Censors by Rita Katz, felt like time warping to the 1950’s.
Other jihadi propaganda on the video-sharing platform may be visually more low-key, but are just as insidious in their own ways.
There is a grim bit in comedian Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special about clicking “don’t like” on an Islamic State beheading video.
“How is this guy cutting peoples’ heads off on YouTube?” Chappelle asks, noting the absurdity of it.
Don’t like. Click.
In reality, reports of extremist content littering YouTube aren’t new. But when hundreds of major advertisers began suspending contracts with YouTube and Google in recent months, boycotting the massive video-sharing platform over concerns with such explicit content, things got a lot more real.
Google services—namely YouTube—are the most plentiful and important links used by terrorist organizations to disseminate their propaganda. And despite all of YouTube’s efforts to keep them out thus far, such groups still manage to sneak their media onto its servers.
… (emphasis in original)
Whatever label you want to apply to another group, “terrorist,” “al Qaeda,” etc., censorship is and remains censorship.
Censorship and intimidation were practiced during the Red Scare of the 1940’s/50’s, lives/careers were ruined, and we weren’t one whit safer than without it.
Want to combat YouTube censorship?
When videos are censored by YouTube, carry them on your site.
Suggested header: Banned on YouTube to make it easy to find.
It won’t stop YouTube’s censorship but it can defeat its intended outcome.