YouTube Invites 200 "Super Flaggers" To Police Videos

YouTube has invited a select group of snitches. About 200 of them. Government agencies, organizations and individuals who have the power to flag videos (up to 20 in one go) and, as a result, take down someone's channel.

Apparently the YouTube team that monitors videos 24/7 doesn't have the time to catch all the ones someone in Google-land deems inappropriate, so they they have added these "super flaggers." YouTube will then review those flagged videos, 90% of which get dumped or given restricted access.

Some of the government agencies include the British police unit who are on the lookout for extremist videos which are not allowed on YouTube, but which are plentiful.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy on YouTube towards content that incites violence," YouTube told the Financial Times. "Our community guidelines prohibit such content and our review teams respond to flagged videos around the clock, routinely removing videos that contain hate speech or incitement to commit violent acts. To increase the efficiency of this process, we have developed an invite-only program that gives users who flag videos regularly tools to flag content at scale."

According to Google, less than 10 of those flaggers are affiliated with a government agency or NGO. Apparently, the rest are just people who have plenty of time on their hands to spend flagging videos.

One of the casualties of these super flaggers was Mark Dice, at least that's what Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange thinks might have happened.  Dice's YouTube channel was taken down without warning. Mark Dice is a loony conspiracy theorist (as is Rudkowski, though they differ on some issues), but Dice made some interesting man-on-street videos proving just how stupid the average Democratic voter is, here and here.

Rudkowski discusses the situation in his latest video.

On the one hand, freedom of speech is one of our inalienable rights, but do we give lunatics and terrorists a public voice? Do we keep these people in the public eye so they can be monitored, or do we drive them further underground? I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Top Ten Viral Videos Of 2012

WIOD, a talk radio station in Florida, has compiled a list of the top 10 viral videos of 2012, some I had seen, some not. Obviously not an extensive list, but some fun stuff to celebrate the end of a year.

Coming in at #10 with over 11 million views is Donna The Deer Lady, who called a radio station complaining about deer crossings being placed in high traffic areas, and how they should be moved. 

#9.  Sweet Brown's Cold Pop Escape with over 11.8 million views. The autotune remix of Sweet Brown's interview after escaping a fire.

#8. Catch The Ice Dude with over 22.3 million views. Not too swift dude dives into a frozen swimming pool.

#7. Opera duo Charlotte & Jonathan with over 29.9 million views. Britain's Got Talent's duo that blew away the crowd.

#6. "Push To Add Drama" with over 39.4 million views. See what happens when someone pushes a red button in the middle of a Belgium town square.

#5. Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney with over 45.6 million  views. "Mitt" and "Obama" duke it out in Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2012.

#4. Brazilian Ghost Elevator Prank with over 51.8 million  views. Scary little girl in elevator prank.

#3. Kony 2012 with over 94.4 million views. Video exposing  LRA leader Joseph Kony. It gained traction until some people decided it was a scam of sorts.

#2. Call Me Maybe with over 358 million views. Apparently a relatively unknown Carly Rae Jepson uploaded this video to Youtube and the rest is history. It has spawned a myriad of parody videos including this from our troops in Afghanistan.

And the #1 spot goes to Korean rap sensation  Gangnam Style with over 942 million views. Still popular in spite of the fact that he wrapped about killing U.S. troops at a concert in 2004.

Iran Creates Alternative To Un-Islamic YouTube

There have been several sites, that I know of, that have created an alternative to YouTube, some have come and gone, a few are still around, now Iran is joining the ranks and has created its very own, brand spanking new version called Mehr. Iran's reason, as with all things Internet, YouTube is too un-Islamic.

The site, which today took forever to access, will exclusively feature videos in Farsi since the site is exclusively geared towards Persian-speaking viewers.

“From now on, people can upload their short films on the website and access (IRIB) produced material,” said IRIB deputy chief Lotfollah Siahkali.

A Facebook page dedicated to Mehr is providing links to some of its content, including music clips produced in Iran.

Iran has censored (and sometimes blocked) YouTube for the past three years, the latest was in  response to the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims."  YouTube isn't the only website that Iran runs  scared of.

It has also been trying to stop its population accessing a number of foreign websites authorities see as undermining the Islamic regime, including popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, as well as the online pages of many Western media outlets, blogs, and pornographic hubs.

[Snip] 

The announcement came amid first steps by the Islamic republic to establish a walled-off national intranet separate from the worldwide Internet.

Iran is working on rolling out its national intranet that it says will be clean of un-Islamic content. Authorities claim the “National Internet” would not cut access to the Internet.

Regardless of Iran's attempts at controlling its populace, those who want access to the world wide web will continue to access the Internet through software work-arounds like Virtual Private Network (VPN), which is illegal in Iran.