I am very concerned that the Obama Campaign is using the YouTube comment approval mechanism to censor criticism of the way the campaign is being run. I submitted the following comment to the campaign’s YouTube movie of Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama:
In his endorsement of Barack Obama at American University, Senator Edward Kennedy announced that “with Barack Obama we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion”, but this is not my experience with Obama’s campaign staff. Long before Kennedy endorsed Obama, Obama staffers prevented me from participating in an Obama rally at Georgia Tech because I carried a small home-made sign that read “Peace Is Good” on one side and “War No More” on the other side.
After I clicked the Submit button, the button blinked for 10 seconds with the message “Pending Approval” and then disappeared. YouTube keeps no public record of rejected comments for those of us who posted them. So there is no way I can verify whether they received my comment or not. But I have reason to believe that they did receive my comment because several other comments showed up on the site after my comment.
I waited five minutes and refreshed the page. My comments were not there. So I repeated my submission and received the same results. Since the YouTube movie and its comments are managed by the Obama campaign, it appears that the Obama campaign has censored my polite, but critical comment.
What can we make of this apparent political censorship? It falls into a pattern of political censorship by Barack Obama’s campaign. In this case, some staffer decided that my critical testimony of the Obama campaign’s political censorship was too persuasive to publish. And they hid behind the YouTube commenting mechanism, which gives them complete control of which comments get published and leaves the writers of the comments without any explanation for the campaign’s censorship.
It is important for us as citizen journalists to expose the corporate media’s technical mechanisms for political censorship. Small design decisions like not letting the writer of a comment know whether the movie publisher reviewed the comment can have a huge effect on whether political communication is democratic or dictatorial. YouTube should archive our rejected comments so we can prove that they were rejected or neglected. But instead, YouTube has designed a system that allows the Obama campaign to censor our political experiences with their campaign.
In one last desperate attempt, I wrote a smaller comment, requesting that the Obama campaign NOT censor my last two comments. I wrote,
Please don’t censor my critical comments of Obama’s campaign staff. It is not democratic.
Again, my comment was whisked away to the Obama campaign’s censors as if it had never been posted at all.
Here is the YouTube video where I was censored by Obama’ campaign staff:
7 responses so far ↓
1 shelbinator // Jan 30, 2008 at 5:46 am
Obama is not alone in this. You think it’s hard trying to get through to him, you should try Clinton. Her YouTube comments have been tightly controlled in the past, and as recently as in Macon a week or two ago they prevented a Young Dem from entering with a personal sign (the Make Global Warming a Priority kind); Benson documented it on Blog for Democracy. Did you try abandoning your sign to get into the Obama rally?
I would imagine all the top-tier candidates are stingy with the open dialog, though I have not personally verified Edwards or any of the Republicans — wait, I think I had a comment censored on Romney or Giuliani’s YT channel.
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2 Will Riley // Jan 30, 2008 at 7:14 am
Good question. I didn’t abandon the sign to get into the rally. Instead, I stood outside the rally with my sign, telling everyone I met that Obama’s staff would not let me in with this sign.
3 The Presidential Candidates // Apr 26, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I understand what your are saying Mr. Riley but you must be appreciative of the tightrope the Obama campaign must walk. Their opponents are going to do everything they can to put Obama into a little box as “left wing fringe liberal” and.. while you and I may very well actually be left wing fringe liberals (I certainly am and proudly so, I havent read the rest of your blog to know about you) — Obama cannot be seen that way… It will hurt his chances of winning in November greatly. In comparing Obama vs. Clinton (or only viable choices) it’s clear that Obama is far less the fascist that Clinton is - I think the choice is clear.
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4 Will Riley // Apr 27, 2008 at 8:01 am
Thank you Presidential Candidates for your anonymous comment. You seem to suggest that Obama’s presidential success is paramount, that his presidential success is more important than our first amendment rights, that the Obama campaign is the lesser of two evils, and that we would be irrational to jeopardize his candidacy by voicing strong criticism of it.
I think it is irrational to support a duplicitous campaign that calls for change and civic participation, while maintaining a tradition of political censorship and centralized political power. It is not enough to argue that Obama is better than his rivals, which I agree with. For change to occur, we must have politicians who share significant political power with all of the people they represent.
I think the Obama campaign and his supporters must be more “appreciative” of our first amendment rights and the ways his campaign is violating them in the name of a new kind of politics. We need Obama to “change” his politics of censorship. A good first step would be for his campaign to personally apologize to those he has censored, including myself and others. When I called and emailed the Obama campaign, no staffer has ever called or emailed me back. This adds insult to injury.
For the record, unlike you, I don’t consider myself a “left wing fringe liberal”. Also, I do not consider myself a moderate or conservative; I consider myself non-partisan and independent. If I had to pick a label, I’d pick “progressive” because I believe that America can and must engage in fundamental reforms as soon as possible.
5 Sensored Female // Jun 13, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I made a few comments about the media, just a couple of days ago on Tim Russert grilling Obama. The point of my message had to do with media distortion. I wasn’t taking sides for either candidate. I was criticizing the media machine for telling us what to think and feel all the time. My comments about the media were deleted, but a silly question I had pertaining to the commentary was left on. How does it work? If enough people flag it as spam is it deleted? I’ve always been critical of media censorship… I didn’t even think about youtube comment censorship. The dynamics of this world and how it is sensored really creeps me out.
6 Youtube downloader // Jun 17, 2008 at 12:51 am
It’s a stupid system.
7 Will Riley // Jun 20, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Thank you Sensored Female for sharing your experience with political censorship. Please post the URL of the website where you left your comment, and please post your original comment before it was truncated and reframed. This is a very important point. To what extent do websites allow users to control their comments? Can they return to their comments and delete them? Can they edit them? Can the website managers edit them without the poster’s permission?
Also, Youtube downloader, please elaborate on your reasons for thinking that it’s a stupid system. What system is stupid and why?
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