California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is currently facing recall in his state and could realistically lose, is still popular among at least one “demographic” – YouTube censors, whether they’re automated or human.
At least that transpires now that Oscar winning filmmaker Errol Webber is facing what reports say is “double censors” because he’s really not fond of the Democrat’s track record in office.
Webber won his Oscar for “Music by Prudence” that deals with a singer with disabilities in Zimbabwe. Back in California, though, Webber decided to flex his apparently stellar documentary-making muscle by taking on a project under the title, “100 Reasons to Recall Gavin Newsom” that looks into all the things that Newsom did wrong during his three years in office, reports say.
This is where things came to a screeching halt, at least on YouTube, where the video got blocked and placed under a total of two warning labels.
In one screenshot shared by Webber, YouTube declared the Newsom era-exposing documentary as something that “may not be appropriate for some users” (true enough – especially when it comes to his hard-core political supporters, but why would YouTube care to appease those?).
Plus, YouTube sent Webber an email informing him that his content was not appropriate for all age groups.
So YouTube was “thinking of the children,” not “of the Democrats” here.
In any case, users can still see the video but only if they wish to proceed by clicking a button on an ominously back screen complete with a prominent exclamation mark seemingly demoting danger ahead.
The other labelled screen reads, (with another the big exclamation mark and a button that lets users “understand and proceed,” reading that, “the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate and offensive to some audiences.”
One would be hard pressed to find a video on YouTube that doesn’t fall into this nebulous category of “offending” someone’s sensibilities; but for YouTube not all sensibilities are born equal.
The video showcasing Newsom’s term in office uses “authoritative” sources like CNN and AP to document all that’s gone wrong during the governor’s rule.
“I made sure that many of the sources for this video were left wing media, so if the fact checkers on YouTube and Facebook wanted to fact check me and discredit something they would be discrediting their own left wing media,” Webber said.
And despite the hurdles on its way, Webber’s content is still finding an audience on YouTube – until, that is, the giant fine-tweaks its censorship tools to downrank what it doesn’t like without necessarily removing it.
