YouTube Flagging Abusers - Haters Gonna Hate

Caption your signed videos in YouTube! Be forewarned. They are out there. Waiting for anybody on his or her "enemies list" as their motive to flag your video when it does not violate any of YouTube's community guidelines. These abusive flaggings were perhaps made easier when videos were done in sign language.

In a YouTube video presentation Th3HaroldDeafVideo brought up a possible problem of YouTube and that is they don't have YouTube video reviewers who know (at least skillfully enough to see the nuances) sign language of signed videos that were flagged. Th3HaroldDeafVideo recounted a time when a few well known deaf vloggers who were targeted by haters had their YouTube account suspended for the supposed violation of YouTube's community guidelines. And raised the specter that YouTube may have video reviewers who may know some sign language but not enough to understand adequately the nuances of sign language, do not know sign language at all when reviewing, or they are deferring to the number of flags a video received without attempting to understand what was said in a signed video.  Those are the possibilities.

Has anybody ever been a victim of flagged (signed) videos by malicious flaggers in your own YouTube account when those videos did not at all violate YouTube's community guidelines? 

Hence, one of the good reason to include captions to your signed videos as a way to protect yourself and minimize the chance of your videos getting flagged by haters who will hate you (as a person) regardless of what you said in your videos. Especially when haters who come in packs and target your videos for removal with the goal of getting your YouTube account closed through excessive (abusive) flagging of videos.

Here is YouTube's community guidelines. And here's the page to YouTube's Content Reporting and Removal with specifics like Flagging Videos in the menu to select from. Here's is what they say about flagging.

Flagging videos is anonymous and no one will know who flagged the video, however we do require you to be logged in to flag a video. YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines and nothing will be removed automatically or with enough flags. Encouraging others to flag another user's video off the site may be considered harassment and could result in a strike on your account or account suspension.

Note the yellow highlight. Th3HaroldDeafVideo may be right that there is a group of deaf people in YouTube land who have in mind to collectively harass any particular deaf vlogger in YouTube they don't like by flagging his/her signed videos as an attempt to get the person's YouTube's account suspended. If that's the case then those people are simply cyberbullies who have nothing better to do but flag videos of people they don't like.  Flagging abuse is common in YouTube as you can see. Although I do wonder why these abusive flaggers behave like? Is it the content they don't like or more like they don't like the person because he or she violates their own "deafhood" sensibilities and don't know any better?

My signed videos have never been flagged. I include my own captions in my own videos.  Maybe it's time to include captions in your own signed videos just for good measure in case your YouTube video gets flagged with the possibility that YouTube video reviewers may not know or know little sign language to know the difference? If you know you're a controversial person or are not well liked by some in the deaf community, maybe it's time to include captions to your signed videos from now on? Might be a smart move. After all, haters gonna hate. I've had my share.

Addendum:

It's just not a YouTube problem but anywhere on the internet social scene such as Facebook or even in a deaf run community forum where haters who try and appeal to moderators with constant whining and complaining by hitting the "complaint button" or, if you're unlucky enough, get moderators who are themselves unwitting abusers of their own moderating powers by making up stuff along the way as a reason to get your account suspended or banned. Either way, haters gonna hate.

Addendum II:

In YouTube's Community Guidelines on "Harassment" near the bottom it states:

It comes down to respect. YouTube is all about sharing and interacting with the community in respectful ways. If you're not sure whether a video or comment you've made crosses the line, follow a simple rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't say it on YouTube. And if you're looking to attack, harass, demean, or impersonate others, go elsewhere. 

The problem is when harassment really becomes a harassment issue? Or perhaps the real issue is whether the person has a thin skin or thick skin who would either squeal like a stuck pig and make harassment charges or have that person simply shrugs his shoulders and move on?

Deaf Nation and captioning

Well, unless I've missed it before but Deaf Nation has begun to caption more of its videos when I came across a video of Joel Barish interviewing Kay Amos about her bed and breakfast business "Aliuqet." Her business does not deal with the "breakfast" part but provides a variety of tequila mixes for her guests to experiment with and enjoy. The name of her business, "Aliuqet," is backward for "tequila."  Nice play of words there. I went back to Deaf Nation's video website and saw several other captioned videos on the first page. It appears they were recently captioned this year. The older ones did not have captions on other video pages. I commend Deaf Nation for taking the first step to include captioning in their videos. The audience is diverse out there when it comes to native signers to quasi-fluent signers to beginners to those who do not understand sign language. What better way to reach a larger audience? Without captioning the audience reach becomes extremely limited. But with captions the potential size of having a captive audience goes up tremendously, even among those who are not familiar with sign language.

Way to go, Joel! And welcome to the world of captioning. It can only get better because your audience size and reach just got bigger!  About time.

The Suckees and the Suckers....

I'm thinking about all the whiners out there who are unable to debate or argue intelligently and knowing when to disagree tactfully so. But instead they throw temper tantrums like a 6 year old kid because their "feelings" were hurt or felt "insulted" and how they demand that the offending person be removed for having an opinion that targeted no specific person. In life, how are they going to learn to suck it up once in a while? Of course, what I'm referring to is the whole DVTV debacle (not Tayler's but the whiners' own). For those who learn to "suck it up" when it comes to vloggers they find "offending" they know what to do by either ignoring the vlogger, put a block on him/her, or able to learn to control their emotions by not getting unnecessarily upset over it. They're called "Suckees." For those who refuse to put a block on the offending person in DVTV or refuse to ignore vlogs they don't like, they're called "Suckers." Why? Well, they are suckers for drama and would rather be on the sucker end of the joke. Weak-minded and unable to resist the need to have drama in their lives, and so they are the suckers.

People can disagree tactfully by voicing their displeasure or disagreement in a reasonable manner. I have no problems when it comes to disagreeing, even strongly, and be respectful about it. But to put on a drama show, stage protests, walk-outs, act intimidating in front of the camera, crying and demanding that the offending person be somehow banned, create vlogs specifically to harass, mock, show extreme hate, name calling, and so on against a person or vlogger they do not like for whatever reasons make them....Suckers. Because once they go down that path then you know they are unable to reasonable debate or argue effectively on why they disagree with that offending person's point of view or opinons. They are unable to agree to disagree and move on. They MUST have drama.

Suckees know what to do, say and act. They refuse to be suckers, and would rather be on the "suckees" end and not on not be "suckers." They learn how to suck it up and not let emotions cloud their judgements. They try and see from other people's point of views and perspectives. They try and see it objectively rather than emotionally. Suckers are unable to debate or argue their case cohesively and clearly, and are perhaps temporarily "crippled" mentally-wise. They are emotionally "crippled" in their own pool of thoughts on hate, contempt, derision, and anger. They are unable to be reasoned with, perhaps on a temporary basis, and how they are unable to objectively argue. In short, they throw themselves on the floor and do these temper tantrums like a 6 year old kid who can't get what he wants and demand that Mommy or Daddy do something about it to make him happy. You need to stop running to Tayler Mayer for every little vlogs that you don't like. Making a personal attack does not replace an effective, well thought out argument.Throwing a temper tantrum doesn't help, either.

And so, in the case of Barry (The Holism) in DVTV, you have the weak-minded group of people who cannot even use the basic common sense to use DVTV's block feature to block out any vloggers they do not like. If not DVTV but in YouTube, they are unable to avoid watching vloggers they don't like. But I suspect that many refuse to block certain people or through act of will power learn not to watch certain vloggers they do not like because many are simply addicted to drama. They want something to complain and whine about. Tayler Mayer is not your Mommy or Daddy for you to cry and run to. If you don't like certain vloggers in DVTV you can easily block that vlogger. Easy! Tayler Mayer already explained recently on how to do that by spoon feeding you that information. But for your own sake and sanity, it's better to avoid watching any vlogger that you don't like in the first place. Use your willpower to make sure of that and get that peace of mind.

I'm telling you. Suckers are addicted to dramas. They want that. They *THRIVE* on that. Suckees know better than to let emotion get the best of them. DVTV is an open book for the world to see and what do you think they see once they take a look at vloggers in DVTV ? A bunch of Suckers? Or a bunch of Suckees? 

Are you a sucker? Probably so. Prove me wrong.

A "closed society" can also be a "hidden society"

When you have a society where the greater majority of the general population do not even know its existence or even understand its way life like, for example, a society of people with hearing loss. It becomes a "hidden society" no matter what that society is like. It wouldn't matter if that "hidden society" is a Deaf community, deaf and hard of hearing community, a cued speech community or a community of late deafened people. But a "hidden society" can also have a "closed society."  That's when it becomes a double whammy because a "closed society" removes itself even further from the general population and sometimes even from the sub-population.

Certainly I am a part of that "hidden society" of people with hearing loss. So are the people in the Deaf community. So are the people at Gallaudet University. So are the people who are late deafened.  So are the people at AGBell. So are the people with hearing aids. So are the people with cochlear implants. So are the people who sign in ASL, SEE, or use cued speech. So are the people who are oralists. Those are examples of people that live in a "hidden society" because hearing loss is an unseen condition not always readily recognized, seen or necessarily understood by the larger general population.

But out of that "hidden society" is a society that can have an "open society" or "closed society" type. I am for a more "open society" type when it comes to dealing with people with hearing loss rather than for a society that's controlling and restrictive. Diversity of hearing loss and preferred mode of communication are wide ranging among people with hearing loss and does not fit the "closed society' model.  An "open society" is not a culture with a rigid structure and little freedom but rather a society of people that is open, understands the differences and uniqueness of each person with a hearing loss along with greater freedom to do what we do with our choices. Our common bond in our "hidden society" deals with issues on communication access to language, the ability to communicate and to strive for better equality, not about Deaf culture or ASL.