A little experiment on YouTube

Yesterday at The Jawa Report I read that Obama ordered the killing of Anwar al-Awkaki, the American traitor that influenced Nidal Hassan and the underwear bomber, among others.  Good on ya, Mr. President!

So today I decided to run a little experiment. YouTube is packed full of this traitor’s blathering on about the benefits of Jihad, etc, etc.  There are full channels devoted to him.  I decided to test the waters on whether YouTube would remove the lectures of a traitor that is now on the federal hitlist.  Here are links for the videos I flagged:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5mMRt6Mixw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG6Nc51FN4Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXAG8H9a95I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeCJpirzjg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coXmP0i9yvc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRK9rzyolIc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFL-ej8UhHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuNcn4UL2M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpNmowpFElU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BO_Pk2hUVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylx8T8nDJ1A

The message I left for YouTube on each of these videos was:

This video – as well as the rest in this series – should be removed from YouTube.  Barack Obama’s administration has authorised the assassination of the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.  He is a terrorist and a threat to this country, and his terrorist propaganda should not be hosted here on YouTube.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens.

YouTube’s Terrorist Tolerance

Well, yesterday, yet another YouTuber was arrested.  This time is was Norman Leboon, Sr. for threatening to kill Eric Cantor, the Virginia Congressman.

From the Philadelpia Inquirer…

Norman Leboon, 38, of the 1600 block of Benner Street in Mayfair, was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia with two counts involving threats against U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican House whip.

Leboon was arrested Saturday by the FBI, three days after his YouTube video was seen by someone in San Francisco and reported to the FBI.

Well how about that?  Someone posted threats on YouTube?  Say it isn’t so!  The funny (or not so funny) thing is that it’s just possible that the FBI ignored Leboon’s brother’s reporting on his brother because, well, threats are nothing new at YouTube.  They are everywhere.

YouTuber AllahAkChew had a threat posted on her channel just today by user MujahidAK74U .  Even the user names are threatening — take killkuffs for example.  It doesn’t take a lot of cognitive ability to realize that “killkuffs” means kill kafir — kafir being the term that muslims use for non-believers.  Then there are all the terrorist avatars that YouTube ignores.  If you think I’m kidding, just go look through the avatars on IslamicRevolutionTV’s subscribers page.  Here are a few samples:

And then there are the backgrounds that people put on their channels, which are a whole other story.  The point is, YouTube turns a blind eye every day to the hatred and violence and threats and thereby hosts a culture of threats and violence.

And if a user is suspended, they just come back under a new user ID like Colleen LaRose did, while again, YouTube turns a blind eye.  Their policies state that you are not allowed to make a new ID when you are suspended, but it’s up to the community to bring it to YouTube’s attention.  I can understand that they have so much video uploaded every day, yada, yada, yada.  Just because something is difficult to do, you are not absolved of your responsibilities.  (“Yeah, Mr. IRS man, those tax forms are just too difficult…”  Wonder how that’d work out…! )

How many true believer whackjobs like Colleen LaRose, Normal Leboon or Nidal Hassan is it going to take for YouTube to own their responsibility?  Yeah — it’s rhetorical.  The answer is, most likely never.

A friend has come up with another way to hold Google/YouTube’s feet to the fire though, and it is ingenious.  Google and YouTube have advertisers.  I doubt those advertisers would be happy to see their ads on pages that advocate things like killing U.S. Congressmen or wiping out the Jews.  Maybe a hit in the pocketbook is the cattleprod we need to wake up Google/YouTube.

All hands on deck – let’s roll!

Related Jawas post – heh!