YouTube is jumping ahead on future downstream
liability problems, and probably also on its relations to advertisers, by
announcing it will tighten its ban on some material regarding weapons,
especially sales and demonstrations of assembly. Niraj Chokshi has a detailed story on p. B2
of the New York Times on Friday, March 23. The Washington Post has a similar story
by Allison Chiu. Bloomberg was even more explicit that the new
policy will ban demonstrations on how to build weapons. It would be common sense to presume this
includes other weapons like pressure cooker bombs (as in the Boston Marathon or
possibly Austin incidents)
The policies will go into effect in early April. Here is YouTube’s own TOS text. Note that YouTube bans links to such sites (selling or
demonstrating firearms).
YouTube has long attracted criticism for censoring (or
taking from advertisers) some content of a sexual nature, for example. I thought we might see a statement by now
from the company regarding FOSTA but it probably believes that its controls in
place are already in compliance.
In February 2015, Blogger had announced a policy banning
sexually explicit images (and probably embedded videos) on its site. See my
February 25, 2015 post. Due to protests,
Blogger withdrew the policy, that had been intended to go into effect in late
March 2015. Yet, during that waiting time,
I had removed some embeds that required adult verification (by sign-on to a
Google account), for which there were not very many. I have not added any more
such embeds since then and have acted as if the policy were in place.
I am a bit concerned about any policy banning hyperlinks. I have made a lot of small videos on YouTube
(and larger ones on Vimeo) but certainly nothing that violates these
policies. I presume the links policy
could be applied to Blogger. I don’t
recall any such hyperlinks over the years, but there is no way to be sure, retrospectively. There is a real issue with “meta-speech” – journalistic
content intended to make the public aware of a particular underreported
hazard. Some persons could interpret
such speech, especially from an “amateur” or non-established press sources, as “gratuitous”
and intended to incite less intact individuals.
One of my blogs (the “cf” blogs) focuses on unusual threats to public
safety, including, for example, EMP weapons, which are not often discusses and,
contrary to a lot of impression, do not have to be nuclear. Popular Mechanics had reported on these
ironically just before 9/11, and then the topic was conveniently “forgotten”,
except by some conservative sources (like the Washington Time in 2009). There is plenty of material on YouTube on how
to protect electronics from such weapons – which should not be confused with promoting
or building such weapons – and I have indeed linked to some of this material on
defending your own property against an unusual terror incident. So far this has not happened – but it is vigilance
from the media that can help prevent it.
YouTube bans on weapons material could harm keeping the public properly
informed on how to protect itself.
There are speculative claims that YouTube will ban
movie trailers that show gun activity, as well as video game trailers that do
the same. The latter is rather silly, as
a lot of video games are animated and don’t present real life threat. (See my movie review March 17 of the short
film “Hecarim” which Reid Ewing provided:
technically excellent, and by no means real world. Could this kind of material be banned? Ridiculous.)
YouTube, as may other platforms soon, seems to be taking
action its own to send a message to Congress that it does not need to weaken Section
230 (or “CDA230”) protections on other public health and safety (and perhaps
terror) hazards, beside sex trafficking – the most obvious right now being
guns. It may also be comforting advertisers,
but many videos have no ads. Mine don’t –
you have to reach a certain unduplicated volume of users to be allowed to show
ads anyway.
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