The idea that people are becoming radicalized because they watch a YouTube video seems pretty unlikely in most cases anyway. These videos are preaching to the choir, not converting kids. Besides, blocking these videos only gives the folks behind them more of a martyr feeling about how people are trying to hold them down and don’t want to hear what they’re saying. The idea that blocking these videos is “preventing terrorism” seems quite unlikely.

I presume this is pure speculation that you just pulled out of your ass? I’m inclined to believe you’re right, but that’s a piss-poor way of determining policy.

More significantly…so what if the videos do aid certain aspects of terrorism? YouTube is a tool that can be utilized for any number of purposes, good or bad, including terrorism. Why is it on Google or anyone else to define terrorist activity (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter – should Google have relentlessly pulled down the videos of protesters in Iran?), to monitor for expressions of that activity (what expressions are worthy of being pulled? can a philosophical discussion about the merits of various quasi-terrorist acts be construed as potentially convincing stupid people to join Al Qaeda, and thus promoting terrorism?), and then to act as enforcers by removing them? That’s censorship and really no different than Apple arbitrarily rejecting apps from the store. If Google wants to do that, fine. But it shouldn’t be expected of them, just as it’s not on Apple to keep all possible offensive content out of a user’s iPhone experience.

There are certainly an awful lot of missing links in the chain if this dude’s skipping straight from posting the video to increasing the risk of casualty-bearing attacks. Even if the video is posted and left alone, people have to watch it, and understand it, and be sympathetic, and be idiots, and want to take action, and have someone to contact about it, and be operationally able to pull something off, and be successful. That’s an awful lot of conditions to satisfy, especially since most plots that have come before have been non-starters or failures, and the ones that have worked didn’t actually create any conditions that were hospitable to any political follow-through on their stated goals. Let ’em post their little videos. Maybe they’ll end up on Tosh.

“Oh yes they does. Corporations are made of people, know that?”
People have no moral obligation to help each other. If they did, the consequences would be staggering. Every time you paid for something you didn’t need, that would be immoral because that money could’ve gone to a starving or a sick person. It’s the good samaritan argument. If people have a moral obligation to help someone else in need, how far are they obligated to go and how much are they obligated to sacrifice to help someone? It’s basically drawing an arbitrary line in the sand trying to measure how much overall good different acts accomplish.

As for people being morally obligated to fight their countries enemies, that’s a pretty ridiculous obligation when you think about it. First of all you’d have to define what an enemy of your country is. I’d argue that starvation, poor medical care, subversion of civil liberties, environmental issues, etc are all “enemies” of a country. Terrorism is only one problem among many, an important problem, but still not the only one. And if you define “enemies of your country” solely as terrorists, you would still have to define to what level are citizens required to help in the war against terrorism. Would any act that aids the war on terrorism fulfill your obligation (like donating $1 to the government) or is that obligation continuous and to what extent would you have to sacrifice for it? Saying that there is a moral obligation to fight terrorists forces you to draw a line saying that morally you’d have to do at least this much to fight terrorists or you’ve failed in your moral obligation. Again, a fairly subjective line trying to measure what overall good different actions do in the war on terrorism.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping people. I think this world would be a much better place if more people helped each other. I just don’t see any reasonable argument that makes it a moral obligation.

And as for the original question, “Should Google try to prevent terrorism?” if the prevention measures mean watching every single video before its publicly posted and having civilians making judgement calls as to whether a video constitutes aiding terrorists, I’d still have to say “No”. It’s basically the same argument as to whether youtube is liable for other people uploading copyright infringing videos. How are they supposed to know whether some guy they’ve never seen before, who may or may not be hiding his face and probably is speaking in a foreign language is talking about blowing something up or reporting the weather?

seems mike is for terrorist videos then???