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"Last Monday, I wrote an editorial piece supporting Senator Joe Lieberman in his plea to Google to show some restraint and start voluntarily censoring and pulling down videos by those known to post terrorist content and terrorist propaganda. Many of you in the comments left on the editorial piece were in agreement with me, as I had demonstrated with a list of contradictory policy moves by the YouTube team, that Google's YouTube team has no discernible guiding ethics when they enforce censorship or their own terms of service. Moreover, YouTube and Google remain clueless as to the difference between free expression, and evil and criminal behavior being effectively marketed using Silicon Valley's own social media methodologies.\nSome of you in the comments, however, took the side of a number of blogs and news organizations in defending the terrorists, saying that they had a right to free speech. I've been taking names, doing some deep thinking, and doing some first hand research of my own.  I've been pondering the best way to present all this information to you, the readers, in a way that shows you exactly what's going on and why this isn't one of those issues you should write off. So bear with me, as I walk you through this whole debacle in laborious detail.\nThe Hypocrisy ListI published last week a list of things that Google's YouTube has let slide, and things that they choose to censor.  Here's the same list, updated (items with updated status bolded):\nMichelle Malkin: Censored for promoting hate speech, when she created a music montage showing victims of Muslim terrorist attacks in response to the Muhammed riots.BumFights: Uncensored. Videos of actual homeless folks paid in sandwiches for beating the crap out of one another.Handsome Hong Kong Guy Censored for showing videos of clothed local females with derogatory towards women music in the background.This Pornography Advertisement Uncensored. It doesn\u2019t show actual full nudity or sex acts, but you definitely get the idea.A Breast-Feeding Mother Censored over obscenity claims.This Strip Tease Censored. A small area over the genitals remains covered for the duration of the minute and a half long strip tease. This video was removed the day after our editorial went live on the site. There are still hundreds more like it on the site, however.An Egyptian Fellow Censored (then uncensored) for showing video evidence of local police brutality.This GTA IV Ad Uncensored, despite depicting a police officer firing a gun into a crowd of civilians.\nNot much has changed.  YouTube still plays host to all sorts of depraved depictions of sex and violence, while still having a record for censoring important journalism, innocent nudity, free speech responses to terrorists and just plain silly videos with sillier music playing.\n\nIf You're Not For Us, You're Against UsWhile the immortal words of our president may have sounded pretty good at the time, I realize that there are varying shades of grey when you're talking about the vagaries of foreign policy. As Senator Lieberman points out, though, this is not one of those cases. All the organizations mentioned as being terrorist organizations put out a steady firehose of videos, all either with the goal of recruiting more Muslims to the cause of killing Americans, or with the goal of rallying the troops by showing brutal ways in which they've killed Americans.\nWhat gets me is that some of those who watched the terrorists' videos (but then refused to link to any of the videos they watched) feigned ignorance as to what the context or meaning of these videos were.  One such account came from the San Jose Murcy News' account of the story.\n\nI asked if she could provide me with a list of the URLs of videos that Lieberman found objectionable, and she promptly e-mailed the list.\nI viewed several of the videos and was honestly a bit confused. There was violence in some, including explosions and sniper fire against American military personnel. But much of the dialogue and on-screen text was in Arabic, making it impossible for me to understand its context. I wasn't sure if such videos violated YouTube's guidelines because the violence wasn't clearly gratuitous - it was representative of what happens in an armed conflict.\n\nI have seen the videos in question (because contrary to Google's claims, they still remain on the website), and it is very clear to me that this isn't a video designed to do anything but shame Americans and rally anti-American forces. Below is an example of what I saw.  Watch and judge for yourself what the goal of this video is.\nThat Video is Sick. Why Did You Just Show Me That?If that in any way approximates your reaction, then part of my work is done, and I can save you from reading an extra few hundred words describing the context and layout and branding of each video. I actually surfed through a few dozen videos under a number of Joe Lieberman's prescribed search terms, and came up with hundreds of video results depicting all more or less the same things.\nEach video was easily branded with the name of the terrorist organization (which you can go out and find publicly issued Fatwas calling for your death.  Yes, you reading this. Your death.). Each video was duplicated a number of times over several accounts and properly tagged with appropriate keywords. Each video poster had on average nine to twelve videos in the account, with about two shocking videos per account and the rest being \"informative videos\" that presumably invite the viewer to join up and kill Americans with them.\nThey give off the appearance that they know and understand the principals of social media marketing to their narrow niche just as well as any good student of Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan or Kevin Nalts (as I reported back in November here at Mashable):\n\n\"One of the most alarming trends we found on the Internet recently is what we call 'narrowcasting',\" said Weimann. \"Terrorists are using the Internet to focus on children, very young children to attract young people to the ideology, and then later to the way of terrorism.\"\nIn Europe, these types of sites are actually criminal, but the United State's free speech laws allow them continued existence, and are used by security officials to gain further understanding into these groups.\nThe question is: What's next? Terrorists have figured out YouTube and SEO, and they've mastered niche marketing.  Has anyone run a search for Al Qaeda's Facebook page?\n\nStill, despite this mastery, many bloggers think that this is still all about freedom of speech. TechDirt's Mike Massnick, a blogger whose opinions I almost always respect and agree with, came out in favor of protecting the terrorist videos in the name of free speech:\nFirst off, it's most likely that these types of videos are preaching to the choir. It's hard to see too many folks watching some poorly produced al-Qaeda propaganda videos and suddenly deciding to join up. But, more importantly, by leaving these videos out in the open, it allows lots of folks to respond to them, criticize them and show them up for the awful propaganda they represent. In other words, why be scared of these videos when you can actually respond? Trying to force them offline suggests that we don't think we can win the argument (and even helps to legitimize those who put up the videos). If these videos are promoting ignorant propaganda, the best response is to rebut, refute or even ridicule them \u2014 not bury them.\nThe problem is that we cannot respond to these videos. Sure, the technology exists, and if I were properly funded, I could get a team of political monkeys to sit around all day and form video responses to these terror vids wherever they sprang up.  The issue is that the words would fall on deaf ears, if they were even heard at all.\nDid you count the number of suicide bombers that blew themselves up in that video? This is social media marketing at it's most refined. Call it targeted marketing, call it guerrilla marking, call it what you will, but these videos find the disenfranchised Muslim (predominantly) male youth, appeal to them with shocking videos that show the powerful \"freedom fighters\" attacking and winning against the \"mighty but stupid imperialist oppressors.\" Once lured in, they check the producer profile for more, and instead are hit with a barrage of videos on how to join up.\nIf you can't imagine this working for recruiting new terrorists, then you obviously haven't watched the US Army do the same thing by putting out free video games and music videos showing kids how awesome it is to fight our enemies, and then wait at the high schools with recruitment forms.\nAnd because of cultural differences and vast divides in language, the terrorists can no more stop that process of US recruitment than we can stop theirs by arguing against it.\nBut Lieberman Has No Solutions, and is All Bluster I'm not a fan nor a constituent of Senator Lieberman.  He and I are temporarily aligned on this issue, so it isn't with great gusto that am defending his position. But those like James Lewin at Podcasting News who feel that Lieberman isn't bringing solutions to the table are all dead wrong:\n\nIf Lieberman thinks YouTube isn\u2019t going far enough, he needs to do more than call on YouTube to ban content from specific users or groups. Lieberman needs to propose concrete ways that YouTube can improve on its current policy of protecting users from offensive content, while still preserving freedom of speech.\nIf Lieberman can\u2019t make concrete suggestions on how Google should improve its policies, we have to assume that he either considers freedom of speech more dangerous than censorship, or that he\u2019s just playing on people\u2019s fears for political gain.\n\nI won't venture to guess what his motives are on this, but one thing is for certain: since Google has shown that they have no intentions of policing themselves on this matter, the US government is more than willing to step in and do it for them.\nThis last Sunday's New York Times contained an editorial piece on the whole matter, one that predictably fell right in line against Lieberman.  They rehashed and belabored almost all the same points that the blogosphere made the week before.\nOn the matter of government solutions, though, they did bring new details to the table:\n\nThe Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House last year by a 404-to-6 vote, would establish a commission to study the terrorist threat and propose legislation. The bill, which the Senate has not acted on, has a finding that the Internet promotes radicalization and terrorism.\nAlthough the report by the homeland security committee stopped short of making recommendations for reining in online speech, it did ask \u201Cwhat, if any, new laws\u201D were needed.\n\nGuess who heads up the committee issuing reports and recommending legislation?  If you guessed the same guy that Google seems to be bent on defying the recommendations of to protect the rights of murderers to document their work, then you guessed correctly.\nThis is the biggest reason as to why I'm so bothered by this. There is truly a moral imperative (something Google claims to be guided by) to remove videos glorifying and promoting death and violence, not to mention a terms of service policy dictating that videos for shock value will not be tolerated. Google and YouTube's inability to form cohesive and ethical corporate policy is finally coming home to roost, and it's going to end up screwing with my free speech when Congress overwhelmingly passes a bill that undoubtedly will require some flunky on Capitol Hill (or worse, the Pentagon) to hit approve on every YouTube video I upload.\nThanks Google."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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