In the last week YouTube have introduced a strict policy on content shared on the platform, particularly with regard to hate speech, fake news, conspiracy theories and inciting violence.
In some respects this is a positive move, radical propaganda should always be challenged, particularly where it is so obvious. The difficulty lies in the fringes of this policy. Leaving aside that banning these people and channels doesn't necessarily tackle the underlying issues, and mainly forces them underground to resurface again somewhere else, the decisions being made are being applied in a stringent blanket approach, I suspect because there is too much content on YouTube for them to really check in any detail.
Last year I had an email from YouTube saying they had a complaint about The Everyday Sinners video for You Were the Ammunition. I guess I'm not surprised as A few comments had been left, which I responded to with detailed arguments, only for the user to delete there comment.
The song itself is a protest song, one of a few on the last album, it's inspiration was my exasperation at the growing number of politicians and people of influence who are using hate speech, division and any number of 'isms' to stir up violence and hatred in segments of populations. Encouraging them to come out and be openly attack people for there cultural, social or ethnic backgrounds. The rule of division.
In no way does the song glorify violence or call for violence, yet at the time of the complaint the video was removed.
Oddly some 6 months later it reappeared on the Collision Music account with a notice on it warning any potential viewers that explicit content was contained in the video and with the comments were turned off. This seemed rather odd, given the song lyrics, but then maybe the listener at YouTube interpreted them a different way, if in fact anyone did listen to it at all and it wasn't flagged using some form of algorithm. Also, the video was a cut together montage of news footage taken from various News outlets, all readily available to view on You Tube.
I have this week received another email from YouTube stating that the video is to be taken down completely now. However if you want to view the video and make up your own mind then it's available on the homepage of the jackcade.com website. Let me know your thoughts.
