Monday 27 September 2010

YouTube and Freedom of Speech

A disturbing incident happened to my channel last week concerning a video which YouTube decided to remove after a complaint from a Pakistani Muslim.

I've never had a problem with YouTube in the past, and have always thought they were pro Freedom of Speech and fairly tolerant and laid back in their approach to peoples content. Particularly when it comes to politics. However this incident has alerted me to a possible problem and I would like to warn other nationalists.

Basically the incident concerned a video I uploaded from Channel 4 News concerning the recent conviction of 9 Pakistani Muslim men in Manchester for grooming a 14 year old girl and having under age sex with her as well as pimping her out as a prostitute to other older Pakistani Muslim men. No doubt many will be familiar with this story, despite efforts by the mainstream media to keep it low profile.

Anyway I uploaded the video and put some commentary alongside it together with the names and addresses of the perpetrators. I also pointed out they were Pakistani Muslims, something which the mainstream media seem willing to keep quiet.

My video soon caught the attention of Pakistani Muslims who visit my channel to leave their usual abuse, and one of them reported it to YouTube as being racist. YouTube agreed it was racist and removed the video without any warning or notice just on the basis of one complaint from a Muslim. They also issued me with a warning that the video had contravened their rules and that further videos of this nature might result in my channel being closed down.

The video itself was the actual news story from Channel 4 and was completely unchanged, nothing added. So one can I only assume it was the text commentary I added for the video description which YouTube objected to. Admittedly I used some strong words and called the men "vile Muslim scum" and said I hoped they would be dealt with in prison for being peadophiles. I also highlighted the nationwide organised child abuse of white teenage girls by Muslim gangs and provide further links to videos and news stories.

Obviously the Muslim who saw this probably was angered by my comments, but I expect his motivation at complaining was more because he didn't want this video on Youtube and the truth out there.

Whatever the reason, YouTube took his side and didn't explain why the video had broke the rules. No opportunity was given to amend the video. They could of simply pointed out that they objected to the strong language and I would of toned it down or removed the text.

Up until this point I had not kept copies of my uploaded videos simply due to limited storage space and the time it takes to archive onto DVDs. So unfortunately after the video was removed I had no way to re-upload it. Being an important news story I was forced to make my own video using text and pictures.

There's a couple of lessons to be learned here.

Firstly, be careful about your video commentary. Whilst it's easy to get angry by these appalling crimes and use strong language or highlight the ethnicity and Muslim link, I think it's counter-productive. Not only does it jeopardise the video content but also the entire channel. It's surely more important to keep the message out there, so better to keep commentary minimal and factual. We should avoid giving our enemies any ammunition they can use against us.

And lastly, always keep backups so if a video does get pulled by YouTube you can always re-upload it!

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