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For some years now, many YouTube entrepreneurs and non-profit political and religious organizations have complained that YouTube has increasingly censored and terminated their accounts for arbitrary, or even confusing reasons. In particular, for Black activists and socially conscious media entrepreneurs like Willie D, YouTube’s heavy handed censorship has smacked of racially biased discrimination. In this video, Willie D and his legal team have suggested that YouTube, whose employee base is only 2.5% Black, is culturally insensitive to the Black community when it censors and terminates black-oriented YouTube accounts. Boyce Watkins also discusses this topic on the Your Black World YouTube channel.
What are your thoughts about YouTube censorship of black media entrepreneurs and activists?
Just a general observation of YouTube is that it has become so dominant in the dissemination of video-based media that some governing body needs to regulate it like they do water, electricity, and so on (hopefully smart regulation, but that’s another topic). YouTube has shown time and again that it cannot police itself. It has become the judge, jury and executioner of the first amendment, and so far, it is completely totalitarian and culturally insensitive not only to the black community, but to any voice that exists outside the majority controlled “mainstream” line of thinking. And with only 2.5% of YouTube employees being black, what kind of influence can we have at YouTube? Willie D’s lawsuit sounds like it can become a grassroots movement that leads to one of the biggest class action lawsuits in history. Time will tell. But do like, share and subscribe to this site and share this article in particle so that YouTube gets the message that at least, it needs to let an outside group completely control its appeal process as it cannot police itself.
Affluent Blacks of Dallas 