The program entitled –
Children’s Fight Club – exposed the practise of videoing assaults, playground fights and criminal damage being committed and then uploading it to online video sites. The high-profile
YouTube came in for a particular drubbing, however.....
......so did a couple of smaller “niche” sites such as Live Leak and Pure Street Fights.
Leaving aside the obvious issues surrounding the idiots who initiate and film this type of crap, two questions for the digital industry sprung to mind:
How should generalist sites like YouTube and MSN Soapbox ensure their content is not of this kind of gratuitously violent and criminal nature? And how can we protect advertisers from appearing alongside such videos which could potentially damage their brand?
I believe media owners have a responsibility and a duty of care to at least be seen to be proactively doing something about it.
The Google spokesperson said that “the community” will judge the content and flag anything inappropriate, but that’s not going to happen!
The people searching for this stuff are just the sickos who want to view it. They’re hardly going to flag it for removal if it’s exactly what they’re looking for.
The types of viewer that enjoy videos of rabbits doing back flips are simply not going to be searching for “happy slappers”. Although last night may now have given rise to a few video vigilantes hell bent on flagging inappropriate content which wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Technology should do the trick - as with search engine listings, keywords in the titles and descriptions could trigger alerts for analysts to take a look and judge whether the video is appropriate and take action. But it will take a little thought and investment....
This’ll then benefit the advertiser too, as will better, more contextual and intuitive algorithms ensure they have better control over where they’re ads are shown.
We’ve already seen the reaction to recent stories of blind networks having distribution deals with less than desirable sites. Action is being taken...
It has to be said that these cases are the minority that are spoiling the party, but with advances in technology and a little common sense it’s not something that’ll be too difficult to fix.
How stupid is it to film yourself kicking in a police car and exposing it to millions anyway?
