Remove Terrorists from YouTube
aTP- Arab tourism portal- New York,– Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, writing in USA Today January 25, called on video sharing platform YouTube to immediately remove videos of the notorious American cleric turned al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki.
“Because of his homicidal anti-American agenda, the Obama administration concluded that al-Awlaki’s words were too dangerous for al-Awlaki himself to live. Yet it is just as easy to find al-Awlaki’s calls to jihad on a YouTube binge as it is to find the latest music videos.”
Wallace pointed out that a simple search for al-Awlaki on YouTube turns up 70,000 results, and while al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, his ability to incite violence from the grave continues to this day.
“For years, al-Awlaki’s lectures — some overtly inciting to violence, others from his ostensibly non-violent period — have been readily available on YouTube, garnering hundreds of thousands of views and a long blue bar of ‘likes.’ Meanwhile, the late al-Qaeda operative is responsible for inspiring and developing such well-known terrorists as the underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, the Boston Marathon bombers and, most recently, San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. A study by the Counter Extremism Project revealed the enduring extent of al-Awlaki’s reach: In 2015, roughly a fourth of Americans linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group were substantially influenced by the extremist cleric.”
Wallace said that YouTube’s intuitive features quickly take viewers from seemingly benign lectures to videos that encourage people to join extremist groups, argue for jihad, and call for violence against Americans.
“While YouTube’s algorithms were surely not intended to serve as an agent of radicalization and social engineering, the results are nonetheless grave. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the San Bernardino killer’s ties to al-Awlaki, these kinds of unintended results can be measured in direct human suffering.”
While acknowledging that al-Awlaki’s presence cannot be completely eliminated from the Internet, Wallace said that YouTube and other social media companies should make searching for his videos much more difficult, as they do for pornographic and copyrighted materials.
“[A] man whom President Obama ordered killed for his dangerous speech should not be allowed free rein online, boosted by YouTube’s technological expertise. It’s time to remove Anwar al-Awlaki from YouTube. Doing so will be a victory that can be measured in lives saved.”
