Censorship from the Cowards at Youtube

From the desk of Thomas Landen on Tue, 2008-03-25 12:43

On 10 January we posted a link to a documentary about Islam. This was an academic documentary, no cartoons nor insults. This morning we received the following message from Sagunto, our Dutch friend who had posted the original video at Youtube:

Censorship-alert! This morning I received several messages from the YouTube "service-team" which stated that the video's featuring the docu: Islam, what the West needs to know (with my Dutch subtitles) were removed from my account, due to "inappropriate content" after they were being flagged by some users. You at BJ provided a link to the vid's (thnx for that), but alas, it will be out of order from this day on :-(

In Dutch:

"..Beste lid:
De onderstaande video is om zijn ongepaste aard verwijderd nadat deze door leden van de YouTube-community is gemarkeerd en door YouTube-personeel is beoordeeld.
# pt 1/12 - Islam, what the West needs to Know Dutch-subs HQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P7Y_moX1V0 .."

I've sent them the following reply, but sofar they didn't respond:

Dear people @ Youtube,
Today I received several messages about the hugely popular documentary "Islam, what the West needs to know", which was apparently removed from my account due to inappropriate content (I have to translate here from the message in Dutch which stated: "ongepast materiaal").
The documentary is almost exclusively based on well known Islamic sources themselves, so you might understand that I'm rather curious as to the reasons why these vid's were removed and what exactly was considered offensive or inappropriate material. Do the people at YouTube consider the Koran/Hadith to be offensive? I think the 44.000 people who saw this documentary would be well served if they knew the reasons behind this decision. I'd like to hear from you.
Kind regards,
Sagunto

Truly, if every piece of information which is deemed “offensive” by Muslims is removed the lights will soon be turned off in Europe.

RE: "Jew" Censorship

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Wed, 2008-03-26 13:33.

Firstly, "Jew" is a legitimate term and search results did appear, only with this message at the top at the top. Secondly, "Jew" does not correspond to the derogatory terms realitydenied mentioned. And lastly, Google actually encouraged me to visit the ADL - a third party that may not be a true representative organization of Jewish people worldwide.

YouTube also banned (only

Submitted by corneel on Tue, 2008-03-25 21:35.

YouTube also banned (only those) South Park-episodes on the Mohammed-cartoons. There must be alternatives to YouTube, not? Post it there too. And make a new YouTube-account, post the documentary again but change the names of the files... I mean rename the files and also be vage with search terms. Luckely, I've downloaded 'What the West needs to know'. Trust me, it's not lost. Play the game with YouTube, seed it again and again. Enlighten the world. YouTube can take us back to the dark ages if people give up seeding stuff that can make critical or even closed minds free.

Youtube's 'Jew' censorship

Submitted by realitydenied on Tue, 2008-03-25 19:32.

That is ridiculous.  All religions should have no control over criticism.  Jews, Muslims, Christians, they all have to deal with it.  Will they have a similar statement for 'infidel' or 'kuffar' or 'raghead'?

Internet Censors

Submitted by realitydenied on Tue, 2008-03-25 19:28.

Of course, there is dawa and jihad on Youtube but no criticism of Islam.  It's forbidden.  All good dhimmis know that.

 

I wonder if the Network Solutions, Google, Yahoo and Youtube bigwigs ever ponder where this censorship privilege for Islam leads?  Do they even consider what it establishes?  Islam is privileged unlike Christianity.  Violence does pay and those who tell you otherwise are wrong.

Youtube and Goggle/Islamists and the ADL

Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Tue, 2008-03-25 14:08.

"Truly, if every piece of information which is deemed “offensive” by Muslims is removed the lights will soon be turned off in Europe."

 

Indeed. Interestingly enough however, Google has gone above and beyond the call of duty for the Jewish faith. If I type "Jew" into the search field, the very top result I get a link to "Offensive Search Results". Below is what that page says, and no I'm not kidding:

An explanation of our search results.

If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.

A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for "Jew" brings up one such unexpected result.

If you use Google to search for "Judaism," "Jewish" or "Jewish people," the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for "Jew" different? One reason is that the word "Jew" is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word "Jewish" when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these:

 

 

Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like "Judaism," "Jewish people," or "Jews" than the single word "Jew." In fact, prior to this incident, the word "Jew" only appeared about once in every 10 million search queries. Now it's likely that the great majority of searches on Google for "Jew" are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.

We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp. In addition, we call your attention to Google's search results on this topic.