A Few Reflections on the Google/YouTube Deal
As usual, I’m a bit late to the party. But there are a few things gnawing at me about the Google/YouTube deal that I think warrant mention. Or, more specifically, some of the issues Google is acquiring via its acquisition of YouTube that could make for some pretty thorny PR in the coming months. The kind of negative PR that Digg has received of late. The kind of negative PR that (now) public behemoths like Google generally find distasteful. You wanna play in the big leagues (as Google does), this kind of stuff will inevitably come up. It’s simply the cost of doing business.
One of the issues I have in mind is that of censorship. Now, for those of you who know me I am generally considered a moderate - one who is pretty conservative on economic issues but pretty liberal on social issues. I don’t like thoughtless, hateful stuff regardless of its origin or its intent, but I also believe that people should be able to avail themselves of the tenet of free speech provided for in our Constitution. That said, censorship is one of those things that turns my blood cold and makes me feel very concerned about those engaging in this practice and in society at large. But it is this kind of censorship that appears to have taken root at YouTube in its handling of Michelle Malkin. Yes, that Michelle Malkin, the uber-conservative “Firecracker” (as labeled by the New York Times). Now, Michelle and I have about as much in common as a B-2 Stealth bomber and a Paul LoDuca bobblehead doll, but if I’ve got my facts straight the way she has been dealt with by YouTube is just downright shabby.
Tom Zeller of the NYT wrote an article titled A Slippery Slope of Censorship at YouTube yesterday, bringing to life some of the feelings I have about censorship and the manner in which Ms. Malkin has been treated.
LAST week, as YouTube continued its recent campaign to spit-shine its image and, perhaps, to look a little less ragtag to potential buyers (including Google, which was said to be eyeing the upstart in the $1.6 billion range), the company took a scrub bucket to some questionable political graffiti on its servers, including a video entry from the doyenne of right-wing blogs, Michelle Malkin (michellemalkin.com).
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Ms. Malkin’s video, titled “First They Came,” had resided on YouTube for some time, and is essentially a crude slideshow paean to people — authors, politicians, filmmakers — who had been made targets, she implies, by intolerant Islamic fascists. (A Windows Media file version of the video can be downloaded at michellemalkin.com/archives/004456.htm).
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This is not to suggest that Ms. Malkin’s video would not be particularly offensive to some people. There is little that Ms. Malkin says or does that is not. But it is hard to imagine what YouTube hopes to gain by punting such content, or what sort of uphill rhetorical battle it is setting itself up for when it does so.
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“A lot of communities in Usenet just died a slow and agonizing death,” Professor Rutenbeck said, “because they became so intolerant of anything that could offend anyone in the group. It’s hard to imagine this not becoming a bigger and bigger challenge for YouTube.”
On Friday, as users across the political spectrum went to war at YouTube, flagging each others’ videos as inappropriate, Ms. Malkin posted a video taunt to the administrators of the site: “I still haven’t heard from you about why you yanked my harmless, nonviolent, nonprofane, nonhateful, nonthreatening little video,” Ms. Malkin said, “which criticized harmful, violent, profane, hateful, threatening, Islamic terrorism.”
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To be fair, YouTube has to retain the right to boot content to maintain legal control of its servers. Otherwise, chaos would reign.
But as GaijinBiker, an American blogger living in Tokyo (ridingsun.com) — and a fan of Ms. Malkin — noted on Thursday, erasing opposing opinions is nothing to celebrate.
“This is not a positive development,” he said on the removal of some anti-Israeli videos from YouTube. “I want these videos to be widely available, so people can see just how deranged and hate-filled Israel’s opponents can be. A tit-for-tat censorship battle only leaves all of us less informed.”
This just sucks. And if the implication is true that YouTube “cleansed” its content base to pretty itself up for acquisition by Google, then it sucks even worse. Are these people serious? Do they really think they can just sweep this kind of tawdry behavior under the rug and that people will let it go? Remember that stuff I wrote about Digg and they way they were getting trashed in the blogosphere for using their editorial might to skew results? No one wins when the people in control of content distribution start advancing their own agenda by monkeying with the free market. Or by making their own judgements of morality. This isn’t a game of Monopoly, guys. You can’t hide those $500s under the board where nobody can see them. Everything you do is out in the open. And what you did here is wrong. Dead wrong. And Google, YOU are now going to have to deal with this. Good luck. My advice - act quickly, act decisively, clearly communicate your support of free speech and make your Terms of Service brutally clear and common-sensical. Enough with the vague legal-ese and obfuscation. Say it straight and fly straight, guys. It’s not that difficult.
This really feels like a front-line challenge to the blurring between the blogosphere and MSM. In this case, it is Google that has become MSM. Anyone with a $130 billion market cap is MSM, sorry. Anyone who is playing footsie with the Chinese government in order to sell in that country is MSM, sorry again. And my fervent hope is that by becoming increasingly MSM Google isn’t going to lose what has made it (and what has made the blogosphere) great - tons of interesting, relevant content, being provided by people across the world possessing a wide range of perspectives on a dizzying array of topics. If YouTube’s cleaning house was just a precursor to what will happen once it is in Google’s fold, the I’m not sure what to say except “let’s roll back the clock.” Keep it real, man. And Do No Evil. Because the more corporate and political you become the less appealing you will be to those who are your bread and butter - your users, remember?
One last thing - doesn’t Akamai provide the caching for Google and Limelight provide the caching for YouTube? Aren’t these guys suing each other (Om Malik had a good post on this in July)? Just another example of the kind of crap Google will be dealing with as it seeks new areas of growth to fight against the increasing gravity of scale. Becoming big and successful is really hard. But continuing to grow even bigger and to become even more successful is a f*cking nightmare. Good luck, Eric, Sergey and Larry. You’re three smart guys with big brains. You’ll need them.
