Blog 2

YouTube was created in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. By September of 2005 YouTube had its first 1 million hit video. That just shows how fast YouTube blew up, and became the number 1 video website. This was a great thing for people who quickly needed to look up educational videos, “how to” videos, and even funny videos for entertainment. Personally I love YouTube and I use it all the time, mostly for entertainment and music, but also for school. YouTube quickly exploded and people started uploading videos like crazy. In 2010, more video were uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 US television networks had created in 60 years. This was an incredible thing, but giving the users the ability to upload whatever they wanted also led to a lot of material that were deemed offensive by viewers, which was a very dangerous thing. YouTube was forced to remove many videos that were offensive to many viewers. YouTube made something that allowed users to flag any videos as containing porn, mature content or graphic violence, depicting illegal acts or being racially or ethnically offensive, and then a video may be removed. I do not agree with this method YouTube uses. I don’t think YouTube should be deleting videos that are put up by users. For example the Dave Foley beheading video that was removed. I don’t think that it should have been removed because yes even though it is horrifying to see, it shows the reality that is going on. Honestly before I read this article in class I had no idea who James Foley was and what was going on about it. If the video was still up I’m sure I would have known more about it. YouTube taking videos down like that one is trying to shield society from the bad stuff that is going on outside of the US, but when in reality those videos should be informing us. I do think that yes some of these videos are too harsh or are offensive to some people. What I think YouTube should do about it is have a disclaimer before the video starts so people are warned and don’t have to watch it if they don’t want to. Another example of censorship on YouTube I found was how YouTube is removing protesting videos. “You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.” (Watson, Paul “Government Orders YouTube to Censor Protest Videos”, Infowars, May 20, 2011) This is basically taking away people’s rights. I think that YouTube should be a place for people to share what they want to share, and when it does come down to things that may be inappropriate or offensive then there should be a disclaimer. 

Works Cited

"Government Orders You Tube To Censor Protest Videos." Infowars. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2014.