The information war comes to YouTube

I have mixed feelings about the posting of insurgent videos on YouTube. I definitely don't think it's a cut-and-dried issue, as Muninn over at Quoth the Raven implies. Here are the statements of fact and principle that amount to my own viewpoint:

• Iraqi insurgent groups are using the Internet to recruit. Videos such as this one are one tool among many, which include web sites, forums, chat, and other forms of Internet communication.
• YouTube is both a commercial entity and a public space. As such, it has some responsibility for the content on the site. Copyrighted material is definitely a no-no; by choice, YouTube has also decided to delete any pornography on the site.
• Americans can handle graphic depictions of violence. Hell, go down to your local movie multiplex, and you'll see at least one movie that revels in carnage. If the shock value is higher when you know that you're looking at a real death, instead of a simulated one, so be it.
• Americans need to see the real face of war. Not only can they handle it, they should be handling it. In other words, we should see the consequences of our decisions, instead of having them pushed off-screen by anyone from military censors to network news executives worried about "offending" the audience.
• American officials need to be good at the information war. I've been worried from the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq about the US government's amateurism in this critical part of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The result? Clumsy efforts at putting a happy face on disturbing facts, when a more honest appraisal would have won public support. The laughable "shiny, happy Muslim-Americans" video. For years, flawed efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan at fighting the information war.
• The argument that, "If terrorists can post pictures and videos of carnage, the terrorists win," is false. If Americans are that easily intimidated, the US shouldn't try being a superpower. If US officials can't put images of violence in context, they're in the wrong jobs.
• In a free society, you have to err on the side of openness.

Where do these bullet points lead? To at least a couple of conclusions:

• If YouTube can police pornography, its employees can track the posting of insurgent videos.
• These videos should be taken down when they are clearly, overtly designed to be recruitment tools for organizations currently fighting US troops.
• Video of real violence is not inherently offensive. Therefore, it's entirely possible that the same scenes of sniper and IED attacks could be posted, as long as they're not tied to insurgent recruitment efforts.
• Six years into the Iraq war, American officials need to win the information war without falling back on censorship. The US government can only win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by formulating coherent, convincing arguments, not squelching the enemy's communications.

I invite you to ponder that last point for a while, particularly as the debates about Iraq and Afghanistan focus on how many troops we should deploy, or how respectful we should be of Pakistan's territory.

Comments

[paperwight]

GooTube is a commercial entity. We don't demand patriotism of any of our other commercial entities (offshoring, tax dodges, etc.). Why should we demand patriotism of them in this instance? They're not selling forbidden munitions to people on the ITAR no-go list.

Also, where does this rule stop? Tamil Tigers -- yes or no? Chechens -- yes or no? IDF -- yes or no? Blackwater -- yes or no?

[Rickbert]

Thanks for noticing the YouTube Smackdown. I'd like to address a few of the points you made, some of which are addressed more fully on our site, but I'll try and summarize.

First, paperwight, YouTube is a company, and their 'customers' are free to hold them to whatever standards they wish. But we aren't asking YouTube to post only the videos we like. We're asking them to enforce their own policies. They claim they don't allow these kinds of videos on their Community Guidelines. You can read the editors' blog over at YouTube, and they're all about being 'nice' and how bad 'hate speech' is, more like a PC university campus than a libertarian free speech absolutist.

They don't host porn because they want to maintain a 'nice' image. They have removed videos of a squirrel dodging a rock (no squirrels were actually harmed in the making of that video) on grounds of animal abuse. Operation YouTube Smackdown is asking for consistency in applying the very standards they so proudly trumpet when they want to garner good press. If hypocrisy is the last public sin, they're guilty of at least that.

Turning to the main post, in a similar vein, we aren't asking the government to censor anything. Nobody's first amendment rights would be violated if YouTube decides they won't host jihadi videos any more than because they decide not to host porn videos. But YouTube is willing to delete videos for 'hate speech' which the government cannot, in any case, do. YouTube chooses what to allow on their site, using legalese to avoid responsibility for what people upload, on the grounds they remove videos that violate their terms of use.

MEMRI estimages as much as 80% of internet jihad sites are hosted in the same countries the jihadists have declared war on. Why should a private company bother to help them spread their messages calling for death and slaughter, when they spend so much of their time deleting videos because they might hurt someone's feelings? A recent article in the Weekly Standard details some other points worth checking out.

Where does it stop? I'm just a little more worried that we don't seem to mind how far it goes. Nobody is trying to stop people from advocating for a cause. But if you head over to our site, can view the Daily Dozen videos we post and then convince me those videos are posted solely to further dispassionate debate, I'll consider resigning from the effort. Good luck.

YouTube presents itself as a happy fun do-it-yourself celebration of technology and the individual. I'm not clear how that requires them to host videos by people who would deny everyone the right to do the same anywhere they come into power.