REAL.video will not shadow ban; affirms protection of legal speech

After careful review, and in consideration of our REAL.video user comments and suggestions, we’ve reversed a previous, temporary action to “de-list” a small number of videos and are expanding our protection of legal speech:

– We received several thoughtful criticisms of our “de-listing” action that took place yesterday, which was applied to a very small number of videos, and we held an internal discussion. In conclusion, we agree with our users. It is not our place to decide which videos people should be allowed to see in search results or on video listing pages.

– The “slippery slope” argument is valid. We agree with our video community, and we appreciate your constructive thoughts on this topic. Our clarified policy is to only censor videos that are illegal.

– All current “de-listed” videos (which was a small number) are being re-listed, which should be complete in a few hours. Certain videos which are deemed illegal content in certain countries will of course continue to be geo-restricted in those countries where they are deemed illegal.

– We will introduce two new requirements that protect free speech while informing our community of video content: Videos containing very vulgar or explicit content will be required to simply add the word “explicit” to the video title. We are also expanding the title character limit to allow for this. What’s the definition of “very vulgar” content? You know it when you hear it.

– In addition, we may place a yellow bar message above certain videos, with the message saying something along the lines of, “Viewer discretion advised” or similar. This message does not in any way result in the video being shadow-banned or de-listed. It is simply a “viewer discretion” message which will be portrayed in a yellow bar, not a red bar. The decision of which videos this will impact is up to us, and it is intended simply to inform the viewer in advance that they may experience content that is shocking in some way, either visually or verbally. (It is entirely possible that this yellow bar designation may actually INCREASE the viewership of such videos, by the way.)

– Thanks to your feedback, we are working to improve our operations and our protection of speech. We welcome more feedback and we will continue to thoughtfully consider all our policies, siding strongly with the protection of speech, including speech that others might find “offensive,” etc.

This free speech protection policy will get REAL.video banned everywhere

Be advised that this policy will, of course, result in REAL.video URLs being banned on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. We are advising everyone of this in advance. That’s because some videos will sooner or later contain speech that the authoritarian tech giants deem to be “disrespectful” or “hateful” in some form, given that their definition of “hate” is anything uttered by a libertarian or a conservative.

This also means it is practically impossible to launch a REAL.video app, or it will get GABbed just like GAB.AI.

Ultimately, we want to live in a world where there is no overriding authority over speech, which means we must all work toward the complete decentralization of videos, speech and other content. P2P tech, in other words, is really the answer here. We are exploring these options for the future evolution of REAL.video. In the long run, we don’t want to even be in a position of moderating video content at all. We are simply forced to do so right now in order to comply with local and foreign laws.

Here’s a far more detailed explanation in my video, filmed this morning:

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