January 15, 2009

YouTube asks an organization that specializes in shielding racists from criticism to help it in the fight against racism

YouTube has reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its expertise in dealing with hate on the Internet. In one outgrowth of that partnership, the League is now a contributor to YouTube's newly launched Abuse Safety Center, where users are empowered to identify and confront hate, and to report abuses. (ADL Press release)

I would like to assume their thinking is that it takes one to know one, but this is probably not the case.

Before it changes, let me quote from the current Community Guidlines Tips:
"Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality. YouTube

Anyway, that is very bad news for freedom of speech on the internet. Let's see how many of the close to 1500 bloggers who came to defend Harry's Place against the powerful censor Jenna Delich are going to criticize YouTube for inviting a partisan defender of racism with special expertise in censorship to screen for racist content.

No comments:

Post a Comment