NO SWEARING!

[Jo]

Good one YouTube!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V_UXYZp09UU

Topic

[peas_and_corn]

I’ve heard that the XKCD joke about having comments read aloud to you has come true. you CUNT.

[John Hoare]

Three things:

a) Argh misuse of “political correctness” YET AGAIN.

b) I’m not entirely sure why he’s getting up in arms about swearing, but thinks the removal of “sexually suggestive” – not hardcore pornography, merely sexually suggestive – material is OK. Why is sexually suggestive material worse than swearing? Sure, you could argue that swearing is about people expressing themselves… but then acting in a sexually suggestive way is ALSO a way for some people to express themselves, or ideas.

(OK, so you could argue that sexually suggestive material could encourage some people to put themselves at risk – but we’re not talking about REMOVING the content, merely demoting it. If they were that worried, they’d remove it entirely.)

c) YouTube have ALWAYS “censored” things, if you want to use that word*. Videos are removed all the time – sometimes, but admittedly not always, for legitimate reasons. So whilst I agree this move is a very bad thing, let’s not pretend YouTube censorship is new.

* Incidentally, I’d argue that “censored” is a bit of a strong word for this – I always imagine censorship is exercised by people with CONTROL. Governments censor – private websites don’t, as you can easily go and publish your video elsewhere. Having said that, Google/YouTube is so powerful and universal that perhaps there is an argument for using the word. But I’m not especially comfortable with it in this instance. (With Google search results, on the other hand, I think the word would definitely be legitimate.)

[Tarka Dal]

That’s a ridiculous abuse of power and rather patronising.
Surely as a user you should be given the choice of whether content is automatically moderated or not?

[Phil]

I’m with Karl…give us a checkbox in our user settings. If we want, we can have all of our sweary sexy search results demoted…if we don’t (or if that’s what we’re looking for specifically–why punish the profane masturbaters of the world?) then nothing changes.

Of course YouTube could just leave everything the way it is but force registration to use their search function (direct links to videos shouldn’t change). If the user is under 14 (say) that stuff won’t show up. If they’re over, full access.

Sure, it’s easy to say you’re 18 when you’re not, but the whole “we have age protection!” thing works well enough to keep myspace out of hot water. Why not here?

[Tarka Dal]

> I?m with Karl

Tease :(

[pfm]

*Immediately goes to watch this again*

[mick]

Ditched PooTube a while ago in favor of: http://www.viddyou.com

[Tarka Dal]

DivX had there own higher quality video site called ‘Stage 6’ going for a while but it closed towards the end of last year.

The trouble is other sites may offer better quality, but Youtube has the name, and as a result a much bigger library of videos and clips to watch.

[Author]

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