I have been a bit under the weather of late, and have not been on-line as much as usual. To add to my surprise when I returned, in my email was a message from the team at YouTube that they had removed one of my videos and put a strike against me for violating their “community standards.”
The video in question was one entitled “Feminist Porno Sluts.” It was an analysis of the changing attitude and relationship between the pornography industry and feminist culture, specifically how that attitude had changed between the second and third wave.
There was no nudity in the video, the same as the rest of them, but what was most concerning was revealed in the snip I am including with this post. It seems that someone on Team YouTube, who, let’s face it, is now Team Google, decided that the video was promoting illegal activity, though of course they did not specify which illegal activity they were talking about. Of course, they could not get specific because there was no such promotion there. In fact, I pointed quite explicitly to the increased incidence of drug abuse and other life damaging activities that is common to women in the porn industry.
I said I was surprised to get the email. I suppose I should have been surprised that it didn’t come sooner. Our esteemed Godfather of the on-line MRM, Angry Harry, not too long ago had a video he made lampooning Harriet Harmon unceremoniously removed from YouTube, with similarly bullshit explanations offered.
In his video, one of the images is that of an obese man with his shirt off. The reason that YouTube/Google gave for censoring the video? Nudity!!
It might be easy to think that this action, even both of these actions, were just some sort of power tripping by some front line corporate manager with too much power and too little education, or perhaps in the age of feminist academe, too much. But either way, this isn’t really the case.
There are THOUSANDS of YouTube videos that are borderline pornographic in content, most of them serving as fronts for porn sites. I am quite sure Youtube tolerates them from the traffic they generate. In this and many of other ways, Google is a huge supporter of pornography on the internet. I am not sure why, but I think it perhaps rhymes with cha-ching.
The Feminist Porno Sluts video was viewed over 10,000 times in the first week simply because of the name. I had to go in to the comments and post an advisory that it was NOT a porn video to get the traffic to slow down. I simply didn’t want to piss off people who might have thought I mislead them about the content.
As I said in my post about donations to the site, I don’t want Google to have a foot in the door here. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I honestly think the organization has it out for MRA’s and a few other targeted groups. Telling the truth seems to be a common thread among them, and the truth is an awful thing to speak in a media world that depends on controlling whatever you are told.
Screw ‘em.
This may well mark the beginning of the end of my time on YouTube, as I have seen in the past that once they start in on someone that has a growing audience (I am pushing 1,500 subscribers) then they don’t quit till they get rid of them.
YouTube has been orchestrating censorship for some time now. Even a mainstream rag like the New York Times, back in 2006. reported that since the moment Google expressed interest buying the fledgling YouYube, the management at YouTube found religion along with the dollar signs and started making things quietly disappear. YouTube knew Google’s style up front, and have been emulating it ever since.
They are proving the Times was right, even as you read this.
