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YouTube vs Free Speech (Mirror)

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Uploaded by on Oct 18, 2009

Some time ago Thunderfoot instigated an action against youtube by releasing the videos called
Youtube versus the Users Part 1, 2 and 3.

The videos all got 10s of thousands of hits and were mirrored by those who supported the cause hundreds of times.

Now if you type the exact title into the youtube search engine, I get nothing at all. Thunderfoot has talked to people all over the world and this is about what 50 % of the people find.

This is a pretty Orwellian re-write of history, and there is only one appropriate action that anyone who desires to protect free speech could engage in, and thats to call bullshit on youtube.

However this pattern is something that is of wider concern.

Youtube has effectively a monopoly on the user based video market. The fact that they are willing to manipulate that system to their advantage opens essentially establishes this as a source of corruption waiting to emerge. Some form of oversight is required.

As users, one mechanism by which you can apply pressure on youtube is by videos such as this. In essence keeping youtube on its toes by ensuring that they realize that there are many vigilant eyes on them, who will cause a public relations disaster for them if they are willing to bastardize the fair and level playing field for their financial gain.

I think it very likely that youtubes beta channels also border on market abuse.

They have taken a user base that was built up on essentially viral dendritic navigation and morphed it into something that looks very much like a commercial video distribution network. Now thats not so bad in itself, but to say that it was done for the users benefit is of course bullshit- dont spit on my cupcake and tell me its frosting!. Similarly actions like these simply do not gel well with corporate slogans like dont be evil. Indeed, if anything this fills me with concern over the lack of accountability and power of organization such as google.

To a very large degree, if google wipes anything you create from its search engines, then that information effectively cannot be found, and effectively doesnt exist anymore.

The information age is here. To an extent we already live in 1984. Someone has to control the search engines, and the access to data. However to have corporate monopolies with little or no accountability is clearly a very dangerous path to tread.

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Uploader Comments (themanofearth)

  • How do you mirror videos?

  • Well their are two ways. 1) You can go to Google and find a site that allows you to download videos from YouTube (and their are a bunch of them) and repost it (this is a violation of the terms of service of YouTube as I came to discover recently but if no one calls you on it and you don't tell, eh) or, 2) You can contact the person and ask them to send you a file containing the video and post it.

  • Tfoot was right in the beginning. Youtube is a private company offering a free service. They don't owe us anything. Monopoly?...What is Youtube just decided not to exist?..Would tfoot require a law to keep them in business.....Just because they exist, doesn't give others the right to dictate their practices and policies....Tfoot acts like, if candidates didn't advertise on youtube they'd have NOwhere else to go...So what if they didn't?...So much socialist thinking.

  • Corporatist could be a bit of a problem. If YouTube were to choose to promote one candidate over another the same as they've rewritten their program to omit certain things that wouldn't bother you?

  • Beeta channels?

  • Beta... It's the accent. :-P

Top Comments

  • THUNDERFOOT TO THE RESCUE! wute!

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All Comments (9)

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  • "Tfoot acts like, if candidates didn't advertise on youtube they'd have NOwhere else to go...So what if they didn't?"

    And that's addressed in the video. YouTube is large enough now that it'd be insane to think that web video advertising anywhere else would be half as effective. You wouldn't consider that a problem?

    What's socialist about what he's saying? Would you prefer corporatist?

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