Posted on 12/20/2010 2:59:47 PM PST by IbJensen
YouTube’s latest anti-Western censorship points to bigger problem
Palestine Media Watch (PMW) translates and posts videos from the TV Channels of both the official Palestinian Authority (rulled by Fattah) and Hamas TV. They’ve brought to the world such gems as the genocidal bunny rabbit and Farfour the murderous mouse.
Well YouTube have shut them down for hate speech when all they are doing is reporting the hate speech of Islam.
These bloggers have a list of all the “objectionable” videos, and a running list of bloggers who are jumping on this story (like we are here at NewsReal).
My blogger/husband notes that PMW has quickly set up an alternative YouTube account, sans those “offending” videos.
We can hope to shame and cajole YouTube into restoring the PMW account, obviously — although I wouldn’t be much of a libertarian conservative if I neglected to add that YouTube is a privately owned company with the right to run their business as they see fit.
HOWEVER: that brings me to the larger problem…
We go through this all the time.
Earlier this year, YouTube pulled Caroline Glick’s pro-Israel parody song “We Con The World,” and threatened the account of Atlas Shrugs’s Pamela Geller.
As I’ve written time and again:
Those who trumpet the advent of YouTube, Google etc as tools that have “permanently changed the media landscape” and will make it easier for right thinking people to get their messages past the legacy media blockade, take note:
These sites are all just tools, privately owned by individuals with fears, weaknesses and a perfectly commendable desire to make money.
These tools belong to people who are not like us and don’t like us in many ways; we must develop our own independent YouTubes and Googles to ensure that developments like these will have minimal impact in the future.
As Mark Steyn observes:
[Companies like YouTube] don’t want to deal with belligerent Muslim lobby groups and similar sorts, and they will inevitably find it easier just to cave to them. Their technological iconoclasm is, alas, all too often accompanied by soft-left squishiness on broader philosophical points such as freedom of expression. I long ago lost count of the number of places, from Toronto Airport to Marriott hotels, that have SteynOnline blocked as a “hate” site.
Oddly enough, jihadist networks calling for death and destruction of western civilization, including the crappy Marriott round the back of the airport, never seem to fall into the “hate” category.
What we really need is someone on our side with the capital and fortitude to launch a competitive, viable, technically and ideologically bulletproof video sharing service that will not censor pro-Western sentiments.
You mean videos like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G74yu8zna5o
And the youtube act of censorship won’t even be mentioned in the lamestream press.
Porky Pig would be a more effective muppet.
Yep. But isn´t it “lovely” to see your hard earned tax money at work? (The EU and US are the worlds 2 biggest donators in money to the palestinians).
Youtube is the most important terrorist/hate site on the web. And we have the numbers to prove it.
YouTube may be playing the neutrality card when pulling videos subject to numerous complaints.
I find youtube easy to ignore.
Mostly junk.
It amazes me the same political left who finds polygamist Mormon sects disturbing gives polygamist Muslims a pass.
It amazes me the same political left who thinks DADT is a travesty gives Sharia law a pass.
It goes to prove one undeniable tenet of the political left: Hate America like we do, and all is forgiven.
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