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YouTube Blacklists Dennis Prager
Another Progressive machine decides to limit free speech by denying easy access to the educational videos of Prager University: YouTube.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. YouTube has decided that 21 Prager University videos need to be placed on “restricted mode,” a category meant for inappropriate and objectionable adult and sexual content. The videos all run only five minutes or less.
Dennis Prager filed a formal complain to try to stop this censorship (which YouTube insists is not censorship), but Prager finally felt he had no option but to go public.
The YouTube video series, known as Prager University, has enjoyed wide success and for good reason. In each video, a noted academic, media personality, or other well known person, addresses a particular issue in a practical and straightforward way, usually in five minutes or less.
There is nothing controversial about the videos, certainly nothing that requires an age rating for viewing so it’s very strange that YouTube would restrict them in any way.
YouTube is owned by Google, and PragerU states on its website that “in response to an official complaint we filed, Google specialists defended their restriction of our videos, and said, ‘We don’t censor anyone,’ although they do ‘take into consideration what the intent of the video is’ and ‘what the focus of the video is.’”
There is no excuse for Google and YouTube censoring and restricting any PragerU videos, which are produced “with the sole intent of educating people of all ages about America’s founding values,” the conservative nonprofit states on its website.
Here’s a List of the videos that YouTube has put on restricted mode:
Are The Police Racist?
Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
Why Did America Fight the Korean War?
Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?
What ISIS Wants
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?
Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do
Did Bush Lie About Iraq?
Who NOT to Vote For
Men and the Power of the Visual
Is America Racist?
Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
The Most Important Question About Abortion
Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
Don’t Judge Blacks Differently
What is the University Diversity Scam?
He Wants You
Israel’s Legal Founding
Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?
Just another attack on free speech . . .
Published in Politics
What they have done by their actions is try to discredit Prager U. Why else would they provide the option of restricting viewing? I find that detestable. It is a type of blacklisting: don’t view these videos– they are disgusting/untrue/inappropriate–whatever negative descriptor you can use. And then when they are accused of censoring, they deny it. I believe that’s precisely what they’re doing.
Why, you youngster, you! How dare you be so bright! Your parents must have done something right, and you also chose to follow their guidance. Good job!
My basic question is, how was Prager U targeted? I saw no warning that his videos were potentially offensive.
@teamamerica
I think I understand you skepticism here, but I believe that there are many ways that a company like youtube can hurt a creator like Prager while you would not notice at all.
One of the most difficult to detect is when videos are left out of searches for similar videos or not highlighted in feeds of those who have accounts. As is mentioned in this post however, is the restricted tag. If you need to sign in to see a video, chances are many people won’t bother at all, and that hurts the creator not just in the short term, but also in long term viewership and reputation as @susanquinn has mentioned.
Just look at the scandals that have plagued twitter and facebook. Especially the facebook scandals show how behind the scenes manipulations can significantly alter the flow of information.
Once you become skeptical about the behavior of the site, believing that youtube may have done some temporary manipulations to see if they could get away with it is not unbelievable. And, as mentioned, this may have been temporary.
However, there is one alternative hypothesis. Youtube has created a user moderator feature that lets people to flag videos for violating community guidelines. Its called “Youtube Heroes”.
The potential for leftists to mass flag a conservative video and youtube will automatically remove/penalize the video, if I understand it correctly.
Look into it. Its not just a problem for conservatives. Youtube has problems regardless.
@modecon– “Look into it. Its not just a problem for conservatives. Youtube has problems regardless”
I don’t trust Google (Youtube’s owner), Facebook Youtube or Mozilla either. I just wanted to determine precisely how Youtube had targeted Prager U.
My understanding is that, if a parent has set-up YouTube filters to prohibit their kids from seeing adult or sexual content, these 21 Prager U videos will be “restricted.” Presumably, you were under no such restrictions from your IP address, which is why you had no problem accessing the videos.
But, the very idea that videos addressing such questions as:
Are The Police Racist?
Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
Why Did America Fight the Korean War?
Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?…
…are unsuitable for teen viewers is stupid and insulting. And, restriction on them just so happens to affect Prager U’s target audience — young people who are propagandized and maleducated by the Left.
That’s a good question. I suspect YouTube might have gotten complaints from people of the Left who heard about or saw the videos. It probably didn’t take too many complaints for YouTube to decide that they were offensive, too. That’s how it often works, but I don’t know if Prager was notified in advice and/or if he was told.
So, if I got this right: Google will force parents to turn off their parental controls in order to watch Prager videos. If they forget to turn them back on, then the computers will be vulnerable to people who want to watch pornography.
Nice job protecting our kids, Google.
I just saw something interesting that was applicable to this post.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/13/pamela-geller-left-press-lashes-out-against-our-free-speech-lawsuit/
It looks like is a quite complicated issue (like we didn’t know already).
I suspect that youtube is free of liability in Prager’s case whether it should be or not. Plus, youtube probably (definitely) has stuff in its user agreement that would make it nigh impossible to bring such action to court especially to seek any damages.
A few quotes from youtube’s terms:
Good for you, ModEcon. You have not only offered ideas to remedy the problem, but when you found out that those options weren’t possible, you followed up. I so appreciate your thoughtfulness and thoroughness!
One comment on this thread offered links to alternative video hosting sites- https://resources.goanimate.com/8-best-youtube-alternatives-for-business-video-hosting/
Perhaps if Youtube develops a pattern of blocking or censoring conservative views, conservatives here and in Britain, Canada, Australia and India should encourage their fellow conservatives to use a more tolerant web hosting site.
I missed that link before, Team. Thank you. The downside is that Vimeo is the only one I recognize, and others have said the same. But I would love for people to frequent the other sites and help bring them along!! Let’s make it a global protest!