Tekblog

In May of Last year The London Daily News reported that YouTube censored US journalist Alex Jones, best known for investigative reporting on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At that time the “Alex Jones Show” on YouTube had over 1 million views per week, and was also responsible for “The Obama Deception.”

“Increasingly YouTube has been scorned for its move away from its foundation of “free speech video” to being seen as part of the establishment it tried to redefine when it was first established.” –PrisonPlanet TV

Censorship?

YouTube, emulates a meritocracy where highest user ratings and most views will land you on the front page. A vote-bot is a piece of software that can be used to systematically downgrade or upgrade vote popularity. Vote-botting can also  be used to deflate vote ratings to such low levels that this forces the video out of search results.

Over the past two years certain YouTube communities such as Atheist YouTubers have suffered greatly under the deluge of YouTube vote-bots. Atheist video popularity ratings have been frequently sabotaged by strategically planned and maliciously orchestrated bands of malicious vote-bots. It is not unusual for video popularity to be reduced from a 5-star to a 1-star rating within a few minutes of these attacks.

“The bot armies are particularly onerous, automating the process of creating accounts, searching for any video by a particular user, then down-rating them all — resulting in such unlikely scenarios as a few thousand 1-star ratings on a video that’s only been up for a few minutes, thus pushing the video so far down the listings that nobody’s likely to ever see it to begin with.” –How to cheat at Youtube

Another method utilized to censor information on YouTube is defined as false flagging. This can be an automated process that flags videos as inappropriate when content is actually innocuous. The most vile flagging campaigns that I am aware of on YouTube, has been via fundamentalist and religious zealot groups. In their attempt to bully the YouTube fringe groups of Atheists, Wiccan’s, and Pagens, they have managed to destroy the advocacy of free speech at YouTube.

In an article titled You Tube Needs Fixin,’ Professor PZ Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris stated: “One of the big problems with YouTube is that science channels that criticize creationists are often shut down — they are targeted by votebots that lower their ratings, and there are plenty of people who file frivolous notifications of DMCA violations that lead to whole channels being shut down until the case is fought out. This is not good — the system is hair-trigger sensitive to complaints, but does nothing to filter out the noise of unwarranted claims made solely to silence people.”

The most powerful tool that fundamentalist and religious zealot groups have used against fringe groups at YouTube is the filing of False DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) claims. This forces YouTube to legally remove the video — effective immediately.

If they are still unable to restrict fringe group information with the three methods I listed above, eventually they often pull a  full monty by filing multiple false DCMA claims.  They know if they file multiple DCMA claims within a short period of time, that the victims channel will be suspended.

“There is a fight going on at Youtube, a fight for free speech, rationality and reason.” –rozeboosje

Please sign the Google/YouTube Censorship Reform Petition

Until Next time – don’t allow yourself to be bullied and stay safe online!

Tags: censorship, DMCA