YouTube yanks video of Islamic police beating girl
'Harassment and bullying' policy used to protect sanctioned Saudi thugs
Published: 8 hours ago
According to reports, video of the incident posted to social media has been fueling outrage among Saudi citizens. Gulf News included an embedded video of the police assault from YouTube only to see the online-video site remove it “for violating YouTube’s policy on harassment and bullying.”
Mohammad Al Sebr, the spokesperson for the commission in Riyadh, told the newspaper on Thursday that an investigation into the incident concluded “the girl had broken a rule that necessitated her arrest. However, the commission patrol did not comply with the regulations and directives with regard to arresting offenders, which led to the escalation of the situation.”
Saudi Arabia’s religious police are infamously known for the time they prevented schoolgirls leaving a burning building in March 2012 because they were not wearing proper Islamic dress. The inferno claimed the lives of 15 girls, BBC reported at the time.
YouTube’s decision to censor the video using its “harassment and cyberbullying” guidelines appears to only benefit the religious police given the victims’ desire to have their story told.
YouTube defines harassment as follows:
Abusive videos, comments, messages.
Revealing someone’s personal information.
Maliciously recording someone without their consent.
Deliberately posting content in order to humiliate someone.
Making hurtful and negative comments/videos about another person.
Unwanted sexualization, which encompasses sexual harassment or sexual bullying in any form.
The episode echoes YouTube’s decision to pull the “The Innocence of Muslims” video in 2012 after the Obama administration claimed it sparked the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. That was eventually shown to be a lie, but YouTube was allegedly encouraged by the White House to yank the video anyway.
“I am actually kind of distressed by this,” Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Politico on Sept. 14, 2012. “Even though there are all these great quotes from inside the White House saying they support free speech….by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don’t want them to take it down, when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect.”
Free speech advocates worry that Twitter will be the next media giant to begin protecting Islam under the guise of diversity and tolerance. The company unveiled the “Twitter Trust and Safety Council,” which includes dozens of groups allegedly dedicated to the protection of free speech.
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“It doesn’t help that among the more than 40 organizations that make up the council, one finds such groups as the ‘Dangerous Speech Project,’ a group with ties to the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and to financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute,” the Daily Signal reported Wednesday.
Twitter, like YouTube, has crafted its “hate content” policy in a way that would easily allow moderators to expunge criticism of Islam or Shariah law.
“Hate speech or advocacy against an individual, organization or protected group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, color, religion, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or other protected status [is prohibited],” the policy states.
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