Youtube Cencorship

YouTube starts their regulation statement by saying that they do not expect the kind of respect reserved for “nuns” – but they do have guidelines of what can and can not be allowed on to the website. These regulations spell out basic rules that one would expect to find on any public content site, however, the company is sure to state these in order to cover their own legal liability.

The website is a public forum encouraging the sharing of thoughts, ideas and content – but with this freedom must come rules. Very generally stated, the guidelines that YouTube enforces cover things like sexual content, child exploitation, any kind of abuse, violence, underage illegal activity, copyright infringements, predatory activities, “hate speech”, spam and many more. It is safe to say that these are very fair and easy rules to abide by.

For an example, I searched “how to make a bomb” on the site. I received over 2,000 results – some being links to songs, kids making harmless bottle bombs, but also, “how-to’s” on making nuclear bombs. While the latter is an action that is prohibited on the site (according to the guidelines), this is, perhaps, an example where no one has yet “flagged” the video and marked it as inappropriate for the site. This goes to show that while the YouTube site enforces these rules and regulations, a public content site is growing every minute, and it would be nearly impossible for the company to police every video that was uploaded onto the site. YouTube depends on its users and their discretion to help them govern the content of the material on their site.