Wednesday, April 07, 2010

YouTube Blocks Viral Spread of Alex Jones’ WikiLeaks Video Showing Army Helicopters Killing Reuters Employees

April 6, 2010

As so often happens with controversial content, and especially videos showing military crimes, You Tube has blocked the viral spread of the powerful and damning Wikileaks video by imposing age verification and a required log-in.

Yesterday, Alex Jones addressed the video the Pentagon never wanted the public to see in the first place. Now, simply viewing the video requires going through two levels of confirmation– requiring users to log-in, certify being over 18 years of age and confirming the “wish” to view the video. (Both messages are displayed below.)

“This video or group may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube’s user community. Please confirm that you wish to view this video.”

“This video or group may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube’s user community. To view this video or group, please verify you are 18 or older by signing in or signing up.”

The age certification pretense for offensive content is at best selectively enforced, and also effectively blocks anyone without a You Tube account from viewing the video. Further, violent and offensive content saturates our culture, with little restraint. No one thinks twice about killings on TV, movies or video games, but it becomes taboo when it is real. As if teenagers about to be faced with pressure to join the military don’t deserve to know the truth about what goes on in war as they consider possible recruitment.

At any rate, requiring a log-in definitely establishes limitations on how many people, including those over 18 years old, will know about this important news story.

However, we are still able to embed this video here. So please, spread this website link to everyone you know and help this video get seen.

No comments: