Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Comments on YouTube should be restricted

The first argument against this is going to be "You can't do that, that's against freedom of speech!" Sure, why not, I can see your logic. But censorship has been occurring for years, generations, SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME ITSELF and all that jazz. So why would this be any different? Honestly, as someone who frequents the site, when checking the comment sections of YouTube videos nothing is more irritating than seeing some idiot spewing nonsense, hate, racism, and-my personal favorite-bigotry, all across the site. People assume that just because they can comment under an assumed name means that they can say whatever they want and get away with it. They let biased, hateful, ugly venom pour from their mouths and will openly attack anyone without restriction. So you might ask: what is being done about this if it is such an issue? YouTube does have a sort of method for "blocking" these types of comments. Previously, other users of the site were able to "down vote" or "flag" comments, this merely caused the comment from being seen despite the fact that there was an option below the comment that allows you to view that comment, making it an entirely pointless system. Under their most recent update on their comment section, the employees at YouTube (or Google, who owns YouTube) they altered it so that you can only report these comments and they linked the comments to Google+ (which hardly anyone uses), thus making the commentator's identity known. Still, this doesn't discourage abusive commentators. So here we are, letting these people fill the internet with hate and sitting by as it happens. Instead, there should be a way besides "flagging" to notify YouTube site administrators that abusive commenting is occurring so that measures may be taken to remove these offenders from having access to the comment sections of videos. To be frank, anyone who uses the anonymity of the internet as an excuse to blatantly attack and offend others rank among the worst kind of people in my book. And if you are one of these people: there is a special place in hell for people like you.

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