YouTube ban is Not the Solution of Problem

Let’s make YouTube remove the objectionable videos. Ban is not a solution.

It has been a year since the YouTube banned in Pakistan. The action was considered as a profound and heroic act. Bunch of corrupt and senseless politicians earned something like ‘nice reputation’ in the eyes of religious extremists. They think that blocking YouTube in Pakistan will solve the problem and image of Islam and Muslims will be elevated and glorified in this world and in eternity. This reminds a quite nice example, I’m sure we all have heard it, ‘When Pigeon sees a cat suppose to attach him, he frightens and immediately closes his eyes, presumably thinking that this will make a cat go away, somehow vanish away, but this actually makes him more vulnerable and finally the cat eats the Pigeon’. The lesson is, keeping your eyes away from danger does not make the danger go away, it will hit you anyway unless to take precautions and retaliate against it.

YouTube is blocked in Pakistan, and most of us are unable to view anything on it. But if you are a nerd and somehow manages to view YouTube, and you see those Blasphemy videos, you’ll find that a lot debate is going on upon these. People are making comments and statements on these, most of comments are from Western world because they all have reach to the contents, and these comments are based on hatred and false judgments, making the situation worst. Innocent people, mostly non Muslims from West are taking a wrong impression about Islam and about our Prophet (PBUH). They believe on what has been shown in those movie clips. There are a few brave Muslims also on YouTube, and they are explaining the things to them, recording the protest and separating lies and misconceptions, but the numbers of these Muslims is very low, because YouTube is banned in most of the Muslims countries, and where it’s open, there is language barriers and people are able to explain the point of view to the rest of the world as it should be.

YouTube had a huge volume of visitors from Pakistan. Let alone the people who used to watch YouTube for fun, there is huge traffic which visits the website for educational and business purposes. Before YouTube ban, there were 13,049,489 views on YouTube for videos from just six educational institutions in Pakistan that used the website to place their video lectures. The total numbers of views for Islamic & educational contents on YouTube were 1,199,368,564, while the total worldwide views of the blasphemy film, were 1,965,186, only 0.164 percent of the former.

No doubt those viewers from Pakistan can make a huge difference in clearing up the image of Islam and our Prophet (PBUH) by commenting on the objectionable material and flagging inappropriate contents.

YouTube has refused to remove the objectionable videos from the website, arguing that these do not fall into the category of objectionable material according to their content policy. The Obama administration asked YouTube to review whether to continue hosting the videos at all under the company’s policies. YouTube said the videos fell within its guidelines as the video is against Islam, but not against Muslim people, and thus not considered “hate speech”.

They have made a diplomatic statement. Let’s consider that they are correct. But we all know that it is also YouTube’s policy to remove contents if it has received a huge negative response, red flags or spam flags. In that case, that content lies into the category of hate speech, because individuals / peoples have voted it against their sentiments, consequently they are bound by their policy to remove that material from their website.

In our case, there are not enough Muslims on YouTube right now to flag blasphemy contents substantially. If Muslim countries allow YouTube, especially Pakistan, then we all together can make a huge difference. We can all together simply force the YouTube to do what is right and YouTube will have to remove these videos from their website.
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Category: Business, Social