Big Tech True Crime: The Case Of The Missing YouTube Video
The removal of North Shore school's board of education recording shows just how far Big Tech will go to censor free speech
(Photo Credit: Slate)
Inside a crowded meeting room Monday evening at Lake Forest High School’s West Campus, parents spoke honestly and candidly.
Not through a Zoom application but a live microphone.
They spoke about freedom of choice. About local control, about getting back to educating children in a loving and accepting environment. They challenged the district’s leadership, sitting just a few feet in front of where they spoke, to do the right thing and not “hide behind state guidelines.”
What they all were getting at, some more specific than others, was for the school board to vote ‘mask optional’ for the coming school year.
(Tuesday, according to Illinois Policy, a spokesperson for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said schools should follow recent CDC guidance, but the recommendations issued July 9 were “not a mask mandate.” The spokesperson acknowledged elected school boards have the power to decide what is best for their districts.)
Monday night, the seven Lake Forest High School District 115 school board members, along with new superintendent Mike Montgomery and incoming principal Erin Lenart, listened quietly to the impassioned pleas.
For those in the room, or watching on live stream at home, the 30 minutes of public speaking time was for the most part, compelling theater.
For those planning to catch the meeting on demand later that night, they missed out.
The video went missing.
But then it mysteriously returned.
Only to have it go missing again.
At some point during the wee hours of Tuesday morning, anyone attempting to access video of the previous night’s BOE meeting saw this on their screen:
Where the video went is a mystery. Gone in the dark.
The only accessible information on the link took a visitor to “YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
Just what are those?
According to YouTube, community guidelines, “are designed to ensure our community stays protected. They set out what’s allowed and not allowed on YouTube, and apply to all types of content on our platform, including videos, comments, links, and thumbnails.”
YT categorizes its guidelines under terms like “Spam and Deceptive Practices,” “Sensitive Content” and “Violent and Dangerous Content.”
Sure, that labeling makes sense. Pornography, for instance, would be under “Sensitive Content” and any rational person would classify an ISIS recruiting video as “Violent and Dangerous Content.”
But also under “Violent and Dangerous Content” is “COVID-19 misinfo policy.”
This a lengthy page and I’m not going to re-print all of it in this article. Feel free to access it by clicking here.
Two pieces of guidelines in the “COVID-19 misinfo policy” are worth noting.
YouTube urges posters do not post content that make claims “that wearing a mask is dangerous or causes negative physical health effects,” or “claims that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.”
That takes us back to the Monday night BOE meeting at Lake Forest High School’s West Campus.
I did watch a portion of the meeting remotely (through the YouTube livestream, which was operating just fine at the time) and recorded the audio of some of that section.
Here are a few comments from individuals who spoke during the public speaking portion:
“The lungs are a really important vessel to get rid of waste. If we are blocking that what are we doing to our children?”“Let’s look beyond COVID-19 and testing and masks…we know its not a risk for kids under 18. It’s time to move one. Everyone wants to move on. This thing is done.” “Masks provided decrease oxygen inhalation not to mention we add speaking to that same environment. These masks are tracking bacteria, mold, moisture…the masks were visually soiled and omitted offensive odors.” "(Masks)don’t work and decade of trials tell us this that they are ineffective against viruses. And we’ve also heard enough about how (masks) cause a lot of harm.”"There is no scientific data that actually proves that masks stop the spread of Covid-19. Nothing. They contain pathogens, they contain bacteria, disease, virus and all kinds of things." Reviewing any of these quotes, could someone at YouTube or a bot (not a human) read these quotes and flag them as being “violent and dangerous content?”
According to YouTube, it has “tasked over 10,000 people with detecting, reviewing, and removing content that violates our guidelines.” It’s safe to assume none of those 10,000 employees or remote freelancers were monitoring the LFHS school board meeting Monday night. Is it possible a digital bot skimming the video universe for spammy descriptions or “violent and dangerous content” flagged the video? Not a chance. What likely happened here is what YouTube says how, “users can also report content to YouTube directly.”
(The Kerr Report reached out to the D115 Communications Director, Melissa Oakley, for comment on the BOE meeting video being taken down. As of publication of this article, neither Ms. Oakley or a representative from the district had responded to the request for comment. A secondary source told TKR the school believes the video was submitted to YouTube by an individual.)
So if the video was submitted by a third party individual, why was it taken down?
Based on YouTube’s rule that content posters do not make claims “that wearing a mask is dangerous or causes negative physical health effects,” or “that masks do not play a role in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19,” the company could make the argument that one or more of the comments published earlier in the article were in violation of their COVID-19 policy.
That’s probably what happened here.
But here’s the rub—there’s going to be a lot of public comments at school board meetings all over Chicagoland in the coming days and weeks from parents speaking truth about masks and their public health validity. Truths backed by current data and affirmed by medical professionals.
But according to YouTube, those truths are fiction, or more specifically, “violent and dangerous content” and not allowed on their platform. It’s Big Tech censoring free speech.
And that’s very troublesome.
Just like in any good true crime story, there’s a twist in the YouTube video mystery.
By mid-afternoon Tuesday, the meeting recording was back up.
What reason for the about face by YouTube? We likely won’t ever know.
The fact it happened at all, the removal of the recording of a open local school district public meeting, is a dangerous, alarming development.
But not unprecedented.
In May, YouTube removed video of a board of education meeting in Kansas. At that meeting, parents in the Shawnee Mission School District echoed comments from those in Lake Forest on the subject of masking.
Concerning for those in that school district was the response by leaders to stifle free speech.
The district eventually re-posted the video, but minus the public comments.
This from an article in the Shawnee Mission Post:
Shawnee Mission communications manager David Smith said the district would repost the video without the public comments portion and is also considering appealing YouTube’s decision.
He said the district is concerned about the implications for continuing to allow public comment at future meetings.
“This could impact our ability to post to YouTube, which would shut off our ability to broadcast meetings,” Smith wrote in an email Thursday to the Shawnee Mission Post. “It’s not pleasant to listen to speakers sharing medical misinformation, but when their freedom of speech threatens the public access of the entire community, that is a problem.”
Just this month, the Shawnee Mission School District is scheduled to vote on a policy that would make public comments absent of its regular school board meetings. It is unclear if the new policy would allow for livestreaming of public comments.
A group of parents are pushing back on that proposal.
Good for them. We should all help pay for their lawyers if necessary.
Fortunately, the recovered Lake Forest High School board of education meeting recording includes the public comments. Preserving the right of citizens to speak freely is critical to not only how our education system works, but our democracy.
Later on Tuesday, LFHS released a statement about the incident:
Lake Forest High School did the right thing in acting swiftly and restoring the video.
Only if it were for a short time.
There is one more twist to the tale.
Sometime late Tuesday, the recording again went missing.
Who knows when or if it will return. There are no paper trails with Big Tech.
Others school districts would be wise to pay attention.
Because it can happen to them.
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