Youtube Flagging and Craigslist Crimes Revisited
Back on November 19, 2007 I wrote a Youtube rant that most readers disagreed with, and will continue to disagree with today. I’ve also been known to bring many craigslist crimes to light, and how Lazy Man Ethics (LME) rules supreme about copyrighted material, prostitution, and adult videos being made readily available for children on the Internet. Although I don’t want to “re-debate” this issue, I just want to give some quick updates about YouTube and craigslist since that post.
YouTube has even more viewers now, and the only real change they made has been instituting displaying advertisements to videos that use copyrighted songs. This was a compromise that some record labels agreed with. I noticed YouTube reads metatags and keywords to determine instantly if the music theme is copyrighted or not, and will put an iTunes advertisement on it if it is. Others are still strict and demand those music videos to be taken down. When it comes to movies or TV shows, some networks or studios enforce their copyright, yet others do not. (Everything is self-monitored.)
YouTube hardcore porn has been getting phased out but the softcore porn is still available, and sometimes not flagged, so kids at the school or library can be exposed to it. In terms of hip-hop videos, violence, animal abuse, and other R-Rated material, I come across many of those videos without the age verification (which is a joke, anyway).
With the so-called Generation Y and Generation Z being so techno-savy, resourceful, and lacking a fear of authority, parents simply cannot supervise or limit surfing the internet. Therefore the trend of underage sex and teenage pregnancies will continue to grow, as will the desensitization of death, violence, and curse words.
It’s no secret that middle schoolers know all of this anyway, heck even when I was in elementary school in the 1980’s kids knew about this and sneaked into movie theaters or had access to VHS porn. It’s just that with today’s modern digital technology it is 100% more easy and there is much more out there.
Statistics from Google show that the British flag more videos than any other country, especially when it comes to gang members flashing guns around. It makes sense since much of our Western (if not all of our) traditional family values come from Victorian times.
Youtube is still the place for psycho teens to post their manifestos before shooting up their school.
A Youtube spokesman says it best:
“In terms of outside regulation verses internal regulation, this is a very new world, so the people who are closest to that world are the ones who understand best. We have a vested interest in making this site a place that’s safe for advertisers and good for the community. Regulators coming from the outside would not have this deep understanding.”“We are not a broadcaster,” he said.
I’m very glad he said “this is a very new world”. It’s called Earth#Flush.
Now let’s talk about craigslist crimes; craigslist has forced U.S. escorts to pay for their ads with their credit card. They removed “erotic services” and replaced it with “adult services”. This scares some off. So they went to Backpage. This was predicted by a couple of DailySkew readers. However, there is no such requirement in other countries, so craigslist still enables sex tourism.
Craigslist crimes have gone up since I first attacked them here on the DailySkew, adn are reported by local news outlets much more. As more people get exposed to craigslist, fraud, muggings, hackings, and rapes increase, especially with the recession. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and craigslist are pretty much suing each other because McMaster said that they didn’t do enough to stop prostitution.
Based on the comments from the various forums around the net, I would say the majority of surfers don’t want craigslist or Youtube to be regulated or any part of the Internet to be regulated. This was a trend that could not have been stopped because users continue to be their own moderators. Google has been a trendsetter in this since the beginning: they want all data to be freely available without moral judgment and rely on the users to keep the info safe from kids.
I’m not promoting regulation because that would be impossible from the enforcement to the sheer number of growing websites. However, I will not defend peer moderation or peer flagging because why would I give the “masses” any benefit of the doubt when time and time again public opinion is revealed to be fickle, uniformed, and simply herds of unhealthy sheep?
Back in the day, it was reasonable to lay the responsibility SOLELY with the parents because there were at least one parent or grandparent at home. In fact, school and church were merely extensions and not crutches. Nowadays, both parents have to work, TV and computers are the babysitters (started with Generation X- a gift from the Baby Boomers), and the internet is mobile.
The lunatics are running the asylum my friends.
The mutants rule and anyone who talks about morality, standards, or uses the word “ought” is deemed a….a…..CONSERVATIVE. OoooooOOOoooooOOOoohhh!!
Welcome to Earth#Flush.
So what am I proposing here since I have no solution?
Quote from Mark Twain: Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
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Vahl here:
Thanks for the update.
I noticed tonight that Weird Al moved his youtube videos to another channel. At that channel, his videos play through a service called Vevo. This service prevents users from downloading videos … at least until someone figures out a workaround!
The #flush thing led me to an independent musician named NEMO — as you know, that name has, uh, particular meaning to me. Anyway, his music was free to download and was like Arrested Development meets some classic jazz beats. I recommend it: leaderofdafreeworld.com
As for Internet crimes — we must continue to fight, reaching out to people one person at a time, ala The Dream Seeker.
I wrote a story yesterday where a drunk Santa was riffing about how messed up the world is, and Dace concluded he just had to keep going, just to see where it all leads and if he really would make a difference or not….
Hey Vahl
How about this White and Nerdy video allowed on youtube:
link
is a ripoff since it's not on Weird Al's channel.
I guess Weird Al has to search for all of his songs every day and flag or claim copyright.
All Google did was put advertisements on the video and none hit back to Weird Al himself.
Amazing.
Thanks for the heads-up, Barry.