Super Flaggers on YouTube?

[Sweet Genius]

If you are familiar with the whole thing, then just comment and tell me what you think about it; but if you aren't, let me explain the entire situation to you.

Google, who owns YouTube, is planning to select about 200 people (Google is lying about the number) to be in the position of being a "Super Flagger". Most of the people in this group will consist of government officials (but it isn't just government officials), and let me explain why this isn't a good thing. First of all, the "Super Flaggers" are an elite group who are hired by Google who will literally look through every video on YouTube, and see if it abides to the community guidelines. Now, you as a viewer have the right to flag videos, but you don't have the right to take them off. These "Super Flaggers" have the right to completely ban your video if it doesn't abide to the YouTube guidelines. Now, let me quickly post the YouTube guidelines for you here (and these are from the YouTube website):

• YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Center and stay safe on YouTube.
• Don't post videos showing bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making.
• Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it.
• YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust.
• Respect copyright. Only upload videos that you made or that you are authorized to use. This means don't upload videos you didn't make, or use content in your videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programs, or videos made by other users, without necessary authorizations. Read our Copyright Tips for more information.
• We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).
• Things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the Terms of Use are taken very seriously. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube.
• Everyone hates spam. Don’t create misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails in order to increase views. It's not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

Now, as you read through the guidelines, you may be thinking: if my video doesn't violate anything, why is it such big deal that government officials are looking through my videos. Well, just think about it: one of the community guidelines is: "...but we don't permit hate speech". Now, you may be thinking: I didn't say anything that could offend anyone. Woah...slow down there Charlie...do you realize that the government can and will take anything out of context, and call it hate speech (they have done it numerous times before). Even if you said one little thing such as: "I don't like homosexuals" or "Abortion is wrong and stupid", the government can take that and say it is hate speech (even if it was just a little two second sentence). But the interesting thing is this: YouTube says they allow free speech, but not hate speech...if we can't say simple things like that, isn't that taking away our free speech (this is totally your opinion remember)? And don't think that is the only hate speech that they will look for....they will take anything out of context. If you said anything about the current government affairs or anything else relating to the government, they can consider that as hate speech. Anything conspiratorial that the government doesn't like; they can just look at your video and say: "Hey, we don't like that...take that video down! It is hate speech!"

I know you are saying in your mind: "Agh, I never said such non-sense". Alright, let's assume your videos perfectly fit the guidelines of YouTube; but what about the other people? Because these are government officials taking this position, they will look for anybody who has "hate speech" in their videos, and/or criticizes the government. Now, I don't know will they really do that or not, but let's think about it: doesn't it make sense that these "government officials" will ban any YouTube video that criticizes certain things about the government? You can't say it doesn't make sense because the government has done that already to a couple of YouTube videos.

But I have another question: why aren't some other YouTube videos banned? YouTube is sometimes full of disgusting, stupid, idiotic, and asinine videos. These videos are constantly flagged by people, but yet, these videos still remain on YouTube. We have no power over which videos should be taken off, but yet, these "super flaggers" do? Why? Why aren't we allowed to have some power? Why are these disgusting videos that are stupid and truly "hate speech" still stay on YouTube? I don't know about you, but I certainly find this fact to be interesting.

Now, I what I really want to know is what you think about this. Do you believe this is another "gimmick" sent out by Google to further restrict your rights, or do you believe Google is doing the right thing by selecting an elite group consisting of "200 people". Please tell me your opinion, as I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Shane]

They've already selected them, ages ago, this isn't something new.

 

[not panda pants]

CTRL + F : TL;DR

it's not there :<

 

[Sweet Genius]

CTRL + F : TL;DR

it's not there :<

?

 

[not panda pants]

?

too much text
tl;dr = too long; didn't read

 

[WolfWraith]

I had no idea they were targeting everything, I thought it was just a group known as Spam404 going around targeting people who have too many tags in descriptions. Either way I still think it's too much power to give to anyone, especially government officials because this means swearing could be targeted too, I guess it could be considered hate speech in a way? lol I would much rather YouTube tried to raise more awareness for these kinds of things. Like when a video has too many tags, instead of removing the video or something, have it temporarily locked from viewing until the user fixes it same for their channel, and then make the flaggers review it again and unlock it when the user has fixed it. There's better ways to sort things out and clean YouTube, but as usual Google always choose the quick and easy approach, so to speak.

 

[Kath]

Just watched a video on this, and I was also curious about people's opinion.

*Warning, the video does contain swear words.
Do you think this guy has the right idea? Or do you think he is being too worried about it?

 

[HypnoSteam]

[Insert meme: "all your bases belong to us" next to YouTube]