Nowadays, 1 300 000 000 people worldwide use YouTube and 300 hours of video are uploaded on the website every minute! YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and the third most visited site worldwide after Google and Facebook (Smith 2016).
While most people use the video-sharing website to get access to information goods for entertainment, the role of YouTube is not as straightforward as you might think.
The video platform has given limited opportunity to human rights investigators to prosecute offenders for their crimes against humanity by using content posted on YouTube as evidence in Court. I say ‘limited opportunity’ because footage might be wrongfully attributed to time, place or people and the platform might not only be used as storage place for video materials but where hatred, violence and unlawful actions are encouraged. Still, there are many examples where criminals have been successfully prosecuted thanks to YouTube materials.
However, this technology enabled path to justice and accountability is on its way to be cut short.
Information goods companies have been incentivized by governments to end hate speech, extremists group communication and urging people to behave unlawfully. This way YouTube began to quickly remove content of violent extremism and terrorism. This removal unfortunately meant the loss of big part of important video evidence which may or may never be found by investigators. And while YouTube stores all video materials removed from the website, the company cannot know the importance of each footage for criminal investigation (Edwards 2017).
So, the question here is whether this censorship on information goods is actually a good thing for society? On the one hand, companies retain their good image and do not advance messages of violence and terror. On the other hand, do not all companies and people have the obligation to care about the greater public good?
References:
Smith,K. 2016, ‘36 Fascinating YouTube Statistics for 2016’, Brandwatch.com, Available at: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/36-youtube-stats-2016/, [Last accessed: 29 September 2017].
Edwards, S. 2017, ‘When YouTube Removes Violent Videos, It Impedes Justice’, Wired.com, Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/when-youtube-removes-violent-videos-it-impedes-justice/, [ Last accessed: 29 September, 2017].
