YouTube rebuffs senator's demands to remove Islamist videos

Google on Monday stood its ground against demands from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that videos by Islamic radicals be removed from YouTube. Google was responding to a letter in which Lieberman suggested that by allowing such videos to remain on the site, Google was assisting in terrorist recruitment and training. But while Google did remove some videos depicting violence and "hate speech," the company reiterated its support for free speech and refused to remove videos espousing radical ideas but not depicting or advocating violence.

In his Monday letter, Lieberman asserted that "Islamist terrorist organizations rely extensively on the Internet to attract supporters and advance their cause." He said that there were dozens of videos on YouTube that are officially branded as belonging to Islamist organizations. And he said that many of these videos depicted or advocated violence, which are already prohibited by the YouTube's existing terms of service.

But Lieberman demanded that Google go further, explicitly banning content from government-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, regardless of the nature of the content. Lieberman suggested that this would be a "straightforward task" because Islamist organizations have not been shy about branding their own materials.

Sen. Lieberman

In its response, posted to Google's Public Policy blog later that same day, Google expressed its appreciation to Lieberman for raising concerns about terrorist material on YouTube. Google said that it had reviewed the videos identified by Sen. Lieberman's office and had removed those that depicted or advocated violence or featured "hate speech." But it also emphasized the enormous logistical challenges involved in filtering the hundreds of thousands of videos that are posted to YouTube every day. Because it's not possible for Google to individually review that many videos, Google relies on its users to flag inappropriate videos for review by Google staff.

Google rejected Lieberman's demand that all videos from designated terrorist groups be removed from YouTube. The video-sharing site "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," the blog post said, and reiterated Google's stance against removing videos simply because of their source.

Lieberman's staff on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee did not return our calls requesting comment, but after posting this story, we received an e-mailed statement from the Senator's office. "In response to my letter, Google apparently has taken 80 videos off YouTube that violated the company’s own guidelines against gratuitous violence. That is a start but it is not enough," reads the statement. "Videos produced by al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliates showing attacks on American troops remain on YouTube’s website and violate YouTube’s own community guidelines. Those videos should be taken down immediately... No matter what their content, videos produced by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, that are committed to attacking America and killing Americans, should not be tolerated. Google must reconsider its policy."

Lieberman's letter Monday pointed to a report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, on the increasing use of the Internet for terrorist recruitment and training. As Richard Koman notes, only one YouTube video is referenced in the report: a music video featuring inflammatory lyrics like "Peace to Hamas and the Hezbollah/OBL pulled me like a shiny star/Like the way we destroyed them two towers ha-ha," but it's plainly not a terrorist training video. It does include news footage of violent events like the September 11 attacks, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But these can't be sufficient grounds for taking down the video; such events are regularly depicted in the mainstream media, and videos of these events are readily available on YouTube. Google is understandably reluctant to set a precedent by removing videos simply because they express a favorable opinion of violent acts.

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