Fix YouTube 2010

Let’s face it: we can’t live without YouTube. … Well, okay, we can survive without it, perhaps. But the Net would be rather grim and crippled, at least for a while, should its single largest video broadcasting site be extinguished. With the amount of people who rely on YT, it’s simply inconceivable.

However, for all its greatness, YouTube’s system is flawed. And when it comes to user support, specifically for content appropriateness and legality, then it’s quite simply broken. There are countless cases where perfectly legit videos have been yanked from the air after certain people repeatedly flagged it for supposedly being inappropriate, or, better yet, sent in bogus DMCA claims (ie.: copyright violation) that whined about the video containing copyrighted content. Of course, a less poisonous yet equally damaging tactic they resort to is vote-botting, where programs are activated that repeatedly down-vote target videos, which has the effect of decreasing their search results value, making it harder and harder for people to find these vids through regular searching.

Of course, YouTube is a business, and therefore follows by two standard business directives: 1) they don’t give a shit about their clients and only do the bare minimum to maintain some decent PR; and 2) their method of dealing with complaints concerning intellectual property and violations of such consists of blindly taking the supposedly offending videos down, and worst of all, if a perfectly legit account gets enough bogus complaint, they can be banned for good, effectively silencing them.

These dishonest tactics are used against all sorts of people: anyone from atheist or skeptic bloggers commenting on how pseudoscience, medical quackery or religion are crap, to far more harmless things, such as Animated Music Videos (AMVs, fan-made videos containing scenes from animated films coupled with music) and their makers. (I’ve had reliable second-hand accounts of this.) Of course, any attempt at asking the YouTube administration for help, or to try and get them to put an end to such ridiculous tactics, have so far met nothing but dead ends.

And so, it’s time to act. AndromedasWake, a YouTube heavy-hitter in the science videos realm, has issued this following call to action:

(Note that this video has been mirrored by many others to prevent it from being lost should it also be yanked; if any readers later on discover that the original video above no longer works, do let me know.)

Here is the video’s description:

Apologies for the monotone narration, I drank a big glass of serious before recording this. It was supposed to be uploaded yesterday as just audio, but YouTube kept failing to process anything (oh, the irony...) so I added some pictures and re-uploaded. The Google Issues thread: http://is.gd/5JJHC
The petition: http://is.gd/5JJM8

Credit to CiphersSon and the several messages I received yesterday bringing this to my attention. Viva Free Speech!

I’ve already signed that petition, so you should too! Even a giant like YouTube can’t ignore its clients for long when they start biting at their ankles in increasing numbers. It’s high time they realized that their system is broken and needs some fixing, fast, before more legit videos are pulled and their users silenced by whining fucktards who don’t like the fact that they’re being called out on their bullshit. (Despite it being these same fucktards who are usually the first to attack others. Oh, the irony.)

PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta have already covered this, and many more doubtlessly will as well as time goes on and the issue gains notoriety. Get out there and make your voices heard, and Fix YouTube!