PART ONE
Source: YourHHRS News
This all began last month when YouTube and their parent company Google got caught with their algorithms down: pedophilia fans were able to enact a hack where they could make playlists of suggestive scenes of preteen girls and code them with time stamps. But most embarrassing, they were also able to get YouTube ads to appear on the resulting pages.
Advertisers were mortified, and in the tradition of sacrificing liberty for safety and ending up with neither, YouTube disabled the comments of video channels that featured minors — including all 280 videos at Special Books By Special Kids which stars people with physical and developmental disabilities.
SBSK founder Chris Ulmer told The Mighty that on March 7 he “received another email from YouTube informing him comments on his channel would be disabled indefinitely with no option to turn them on,” explaining: “This action is being taken on channels that feature minors and may be at higher risk for predatory comments.”
Despite its name, only half of SBSK videos feature children. Ulmer asked “if comments could be enabled on his channel for videos that don’t feature children.” All the representative could say was “I don’t have insight on the permanence of this action.” Well, perhaps we do.
In his latest video, Ulmer theorizes that the YouTube algorithm got stuck on the word “Kids,” making comments as simple (and positive) as “You look fine the way you are” to disabled adults sound predatory. A followup SBSK interview co-starred a woman who “met” a man through his earlier SBSK video; most recently, SBSK ran a 30-minute feature about a wheelchair-using young man and his girlfriend, who does not want to be seen as his caregiver.
Along with pedophiles, are Google and/or their advertisers also worried about cyber-gold diggers worming their way into the hearts, homes, families, and bank accounts of “vulnerable” disabled “victims?” Equating disabled children with being extra vulnerable is one thing; equating disabled adults with being children simply because they’re disabled is quite another.
At any rate, Ulmer and his partner Alyssa Porter have gone to the mattresses with an online petition, and declared a “love mob” war with a request to tweet #UnSilenceSBSK to these YouTube, Google, and advertiser execs with the same kind of tolerance and respect that the SBSK community show each other:
@SusanWojcicki @ytcreators @rkyncl @nealmohan @vgcerf @dmbrown1 @sundarpichai @ericschmidt @Disney @epicGames @nestle @grammarly @GNC @robertIger @bensherwood @TimSweeneyEpic @MarkRein @Brad_Hoover @max_lytvyn @shevchenko
Since the only comments you can now make on the SBSK YouTube channel are on their Community page, they’ve set up camp on Reddit.