Our recent video of Home Brew Day with the Masholes was just removed from YouTube because of “Inappropriate Content” (see the image). Seems it depicts the horrible act of drinking? Or should I say – it depicts “bad stuff”. Specifically the issue that is reported on this video was:
Don’t post videos showing bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making.
Seriously? Does home brewing fit into the same category as animal abuse and bomb making? I tried contacting YouTube about it, but there is apparently no recourse to their “community flagging” system. I have been given a warning by the “community” which will be removed in 6 months… However in the interim, I suppose I am out of the contest (sponsored by the American Homebrew Association none the less, with many more videos depicting the same content as ours…). It’s a shame, we had intentionally posted it only to YouTube for the contest and had over 7,000 views there before they blocked it.
We have had some YouTube problems in the past, which is why we don’t embed them anymore and have switched to Blip.tv. As a matter of fact, I am going to upload the video to blip.tv right now so that I can still share it on the site, but it’s a shame that the folks at the AHA won’t get to see it for the contest. I was really proud of what we had pulled together for this episode.
If anyone has any connections with the AHA we would love to be able to connect with someone there about this debacle and still have our video considered.
Thanks to everyone who watched the video before it got canned… You can watch the Blip.tv version now on the original post. But be careful if you do watch it – it aparently depicts some pretty bad stuff.
UPDATE: the latest (and more believable) rationale from YouTube is that the video contains “dangerous or illegal acts”. I know that homebrewing is legal here, but it seems that there are a lot of people who don’t think that it is. Perhaps that is the problem?
