Especially through the great youtubers in the Spanish language like Rubius, we have heard that YouTube has just changed its community rules . Something that most of the great content creators in Spain have openly described as censorship. But how exactly does this new theoretical YouTube censorship work?
The user as the center of censorship
Unlike many other social networks, prior censorship theoretically does not exist on YouTube . Unlike the images with naked torsos of women on Facebook or the Free The Nipple campaign on Instagram (the one that asks that photos of female nipples not be censored), YouTube only launches its censorship process upon request from viewers. What is commonly known by the name of flageo (from English flag).
Beyond those grotesque content that contains propaganda or apology for terrorism (we remember that many executions of the self-proclaimed Islamic State were published on YouTube) that barely represent 1% of the content blocked by the Google subsidiary. It is the complaints from the user community that put a “qualified and multilingual team” on alert, which will be in charge of evaluating whether the contents are likely to be eliminated based on YouTube standards.
According to the social network itself, this review team for reported content works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, each and every day of the year, enforcing community standards. Therefore, if a video is susceptible to being eliminated, it remains solely and exclusively in the hands of the subjective interpretation of the video by the reviewer on duty.
In turn, YouTube acts in each country in accordance with the rules and laws relating to it . Hence, sometimes we find notices about the nature of the content or directly restrictions based on our geographical location.
Hence, the world's largest video platform leaves the censorship of content in the hands of its users. Moment from which the decision becomes YouTube.
Some facts about censorship on YouTube
Since YouTube began its journey back in 2016, more than 90 million people (something like the population of Germany) have reported video on the social network. More than a third of them have reported videos on more than one occasion. A volume of complaints that according to data provided by the US company increases by 25% from one year to the next. These same data affirm that content has been reported from all countries in the world. Of all, the states with the highest reporting rates are Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, Ukraine and France.
In 2015 alone, YouTube eliminated more than 92 million videos for alleged violations of community policies that combination of public complaints by the user, its technology for spam detection and the strict supervision system through this team skilled.