Seriously furious!

[jess1]

Im copying and pasting from my blog... Im steaming really steaming!

I watched in amazement at Panorama BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | Children's Fight Club last night and am so furious and angry at the arrogance of Google’s YouTube and the independent website LiveLeak at knowingly facilitating people to upload their filming of kids violently attacking other kids to the point where by a few that have been filmed, we hear, had been hospitalised, some of these young kids have been so traumatised that the psychological damage has already been done and all in the name of “entertainment”.

One family interviewed have been completely devastated when their young teenage son became a victim of bullying, it was bad enough that the frequent physical attacks were happening, but to have a crowd of jeering onlookers egging the ferocious attacks on so they could be filmed and uploaded on to yourtube, so the attack can be seen globally across the world.

Teenagers are amongst the most vulnerable members of our community, it’s a time in their lives where peer pressure is the be all and end all, it’s the time in their lives where they are looking for self identity, self value and worth. It’s the toughest part of their lives where they are changing physically and emotionally, they are making the journey from becoming children to young adults. Experiences like being bullied will always follow them throughout their adult lives. The suicide rate amongst teenagers because of bullying is so high. Child line has spent years in supporting these young vulnerable people, but youtube has just wiped all that hard work out because as the report highlights, they don’t remove offensive videos, they think this is perfectly acceptable material and leave the onus on the general public to determine what stays and what goes “Rachel Whetstone told me it was up to the community who use the site to decide when something was inappropriate”(source BBC panorama website). As the panorama report showed, even the films that were flagged by the general public as offensive and should be removed, were still left on the site.

If this were not sickening enough, in the midst of these violent films, there were famous High Street Brands adverts being served up “blue-chip brands - including British Telecom, John Lewis, Carphone Warehouse and Orange - came to be splashed across an internet website called Pure Street Fights.” When asked why on earth they would be seen associated with what is not too far off child abuse, the predictable answer was “they had no knowledge of the adverts' appearance on the site and have launched investigations.” Some sacked their advertising agencies “Almost all blamed rogue advertising networks for putting them onto the website. Both Carphone Warehouse and O2 have sacked the advertising networks responsible.”(source panorama website) And this one may sound familiar “Guy Philpott of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which represents online advertising companies, said that brands were often not aware of where advertising networks were placing their adverts.” (Panorama)

I wonder if Rachel Whetstone of youtube and Hayden Hewitt, the co-founder of LiveLeak would remain so arrogant if it were their children being filmed taking a beating? You both have seriously lost the plot and you are facilitating nothing short of child abuse (teenagers are still minors and as adults, we should and have a duty to be protecting them) and for those high street brands not knowing where your adverts are being shown, is no excuse, do you really need clicks that badly?
Im disgusted!

[essdeekay]

Agree

Si

[Mogga]

There are so few boundaries for kids these days. How can they know how to expect when the role models from magazines/tv/film do drugs, fight, drink drive, etc?

When their parents are happy to let them go out on the streets night after night. When parents give their kids the money for booze or even buy it themselves and let them hang out on streets causing trouble.

Someone I spoke to recently said the police had told them that "the kids were better were they were as they knew where they were and it was better than them being on the streets" (They're on a bit of land where they only disturb a handful of people!)
IMO the kids would be better off at home under the supervision of parents rather than allowed to be anti-social and disturb anyone.

I know when I was a kid I'd have got into serious trouble for doing a lot of stuff kids these days seem to take for granted that its ok. But these days you're not allowed to smack your kids, schools can barely punish them and they just don't care. You can't tell kids they're wrong, behaving badly or are naughty. Kids get rewarded for not knifing people!!!

I think parents need to get a grip of some of these kids and try to repair the damage before it's too late. I think for some it probably is and we've got an underclass of evil that needs getting rid of.

The gun crime in Manchester and London is one of the many symptoms of a society which needs to get some serious help.

[axod]

I saw the docu as well. Quite sad to see kids behaving like that, but...

1. Blaming youtube isn't helpful... saying they should police things is easy to say, but hard to do in practice... do we blame google for indexing inappropriate material in their search index? I don't, because I know that noticing something is inappropriate is a difficult, hard and costly problem. I'm sure they do all they can to limit them, but it's not an easy problem.
Considering the massive volume of videos on youtube, what do they do? Pay people to watch them all and censor them? That would be a massive undertaking. Videos are probably uploaded at a rate faster than an army of workers can watch them all.

2. Blaming blue chip companies for advertising on websites is just misunderstanding how online advertising works. The companies highlighted in the docu wouldn't have any clue whatsoever what websites they are on. Anyone can find adverts for big companies on some network somewhere that doesn't bother approving websites.

It's a sad fact some people take pleasure in watching people in pain. If they weren't uploading sick videos to youtube they'd be emailing them to each other, or something else.

Technology can always always be used for good and bad. Blaming it when people abuse it isn't good in my opinion. Better to blame the people for being sick/stupid.
And in this case of course their parents for bringing them up without any morals.

[jess1]

In my teens I went to a venue called the round house in Camden to watch a play called Snuff Rock, it was loosely based on a craze where by people were given sums of money to live out their last few weeks in relative celeb lifestyles in exchange for allowing some low life to film their suicide. The movies were called snuff films and were immediately banned. The question is, how far removed is this?

Blaming parents is easy, sometimes it’s not the fault of parents. I wont deny some parents are so inadequate with their own lives it’s a wonder how they cope at all.
So I cant point the finger at all parents. There are so many social factors to be taken onboard.

[axod]

Originally Posted by jess1 Blaming parents is easy, sometimes it’s not the fault of parents. I wont deny some parents are so inadequate with their own lives it’s a wonder how they cope at all. So I cant point the finger at all parents. There are so many social factors to be taken onboard.

I disagree. One of the jobs of a parent should be to instill morals in children. To teach them right from wrong. Teach them to have empathy and compassion for others.
If a child is lacking in those, I blame the parents squarely. Either they were a bad role model, or they weren't around to provide a role model at all.
Yes I know there's lots of social factors that explain why the parents are bad parents, but I maintain that the main issue is bad and lazy parenting.

The question is how do you break a chain of bad parenting...

[jess1]

"Blaming youtube isn't helpful... saying they should police things is easy to say, but hard to do in practice" You would have seen then on the report that even sites that were flagged up were not removed. So where is the cut off point? When we see child pornography uploaded onto yourtube, would you still stand by your comments then?
What’s the difference between adults viewing teen sex and teen violence, why is there one law for one and Youtube is exonerated from the other, its contradictory surely?

Seems like in affiliate marketing some of the blue chip companies mentioned have been so anal with regards to the brand protection, that to now say they don’t know where their ads are being shown, is again a contradiction, no?

[jess1]

"I disagree. One of the jobs of a parent should be to instill morals in children. To teach them right from wrong. Teach them to have empathy and compassion for others."
How can some parents teach that when they don't have any themselves?

Yeah breaking the cycle... is the million dollar question, schools, parenting classes, sex education is one way, but... this is already being done and it looks like not a lot is getting through. So I dont have the answer axod.

[axod]

Originally Posted by jess1 Yeah breaking the cycle... is the million dollar question, schools, parenting classes, sex education is one way, but... this is already being done and it looks like not a lot is getting through. So I dont have the answer axod.

Sterilising criminals would be a start

[axod]

Originally Posted by jess1 "Blaming youtube isn't helpful... saying they should police things is easy to say, but hard to do in practice" You would have seen then on the report that even sites that were flagged up were not removed. So where is the cut off point? When we see child pornography uploaded onto yourtube, would you still stand by your comments then? What’s the difference between adults viewing teen sex and teen violence, why is there one law for one and Youtube is exonerated from the other, its contradictory surely?

Sure but how many videos do they host... millions? how many requests to take down content do they get a day? probably millions... how many of those are false requests? probably most of them...
It's not an easy problem. It'd be great if there was an easy solution, but at the end of the day it's user generated content, and pretty much the best they can do is to promise to take something down if enough people complain about it.

[jess1]

"What’s the difference between adults viewing teen sex and teen violence, why is there one law for one and Youtube is exonerated from the other, its contradictory surely?"
That was the question...

the other was "Seems like in affiliate marketing some of the blue chip companies mentioned have been so anal with regards to the brand protection, that to now say they don’t know where their ads are being shown, is again a contradiction, no?"

So how do we protect the kids that were being filmed? If this was your