I enjoy YouTube. I enjoy whittling away an hour or two with a huge variety of content. I watched 'One Froggy Day' last Thursday followed up with some Thai language tutorials and finished off with the ubiquitous 'funny' animal videos. I think YouTube is a great platform for people to express their views, to entertain, to create - a platform it seems though that has it's fair share of problems.
I was recommended, by YouTube, a month or two ago to look at a response video. It looked entertaining as there was a young man dressed up as The Joker from Batman fiction. I watched it and had a rare time and felt compelled to look at further related videos. Before I knew it I was watching two sides of an argument regarding the belief in the biblical god unraveling before me - and it seemed to have been a long drawn out argument by the time I got to it.
Whilst many people may enjoy debating the existence of a deity or not I don't, but was impressed by the atheist argument as it was structured, informed, paced and usually well produced. However I noticed a lot of comments from other viewers stating that the voting system within YouTube was skewed and unjust and upon further investigation found this to at least note worthy.
Fast forward to this weekend and it appears hell, or at least as close as an agnostic would care to call it, has broke loose. One of the bastions of free thought on the side of atheism had been suspended. It didn't take long to see that this was for a video asking for members of the YouTube community to take action and contact YouTube regarding this skewed voting system. It appeared that votebots were the cause of videos being deemed poor quality and the finger of blame lay at some creationists.
Now I'm not sure who is to blame for the tinkering of the voting system, but I am against unfair voting. One person = One vote is what democracy is based upon. Having viewed the video that got the member suspended I thought that YouTube had overreacted to the member and grossly undermanaged the voting problem. Have a look at the following videos to see what you think of the situation.
Thunderf00t, the suspended member, calls those upset with YouTube's handling of the current votebot situation to peaceful action.
Thunderf00t's response to being suspended twelve hours after the first video had gone up.
An automated system tutorial to cheat the voting system as found by YouTube member Sockpuppetfromhell.
More automated programs on how to cheat the voting system.
It seems that there is a rife problem with the voting system in YouTube, and free speech - which YouTube claim to try and embrace - needs an equal and unbias voting system in order to categorise, polarise or otherwise work.
I think it is unfair of YouTube to have me- your average Joe Blogger- become embroiled in a dramatic and thought provoking debate and then have half of that debate cut off because of flaws within their own system. They brought this to my attention with related videos, they appear to be ignoring the botting problem and they have removed a member of their community for pointing this problem out to them - which doesn't appear to be an easy thing to do from watching Thunderf00t's video.
Wrapping up, it now looks as if thousands of YouTube members are reuploading the banned video and giving it more power than it would have had in one member's channel alone. Are we seeing a change in public perception to being censored or is it another example of people rallying together in a new form of community? With the recent Facebook terms of service trouble I hope that people are now finding that the power lies with them and that our actions as a whole will determine the world we choose to live in.
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