by Ellen Seidler, Contributing Writer

This self-regulation by the YouTube “community” provides a loophole for YouTube to absolve itself of legal liability regarding copyright infringement, and it also opens the door to censorship of clips by those critical of the LGBT community.

In her written response, Nielson sought to specifically downplay this issue: “Thousands of videos are flagged each day, and though we don’t break down specific metrics regarding what content is flagged, the assumption that ‘LGBT content is routinely subject to flagging by users, while similar content depicting straight characters/individuals does not get flagged,’ seems anecdotal and is not supported by what we observe on the site. YouTube is, and always has been, a forum for free expression. To be clear, our community is made up of millions of people across the world and is diverse racially, ethnically, politically, religiously as well as in terms of sexual orientation.”

[via Daily Dose of Queer]

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