YouTube Rhetorical Analysis
Sharing videos existed since the invention of the video camera. After that, it
started to be common thanks to the invention of TVs and cinemas. Nowadays, thanks
to the internet, video sharing has become a very easy process, and it can be done
with anyone, anywhere. YouTube is biggest video sharing site, and it is used by many
because of how easy it is to upload videos, and how easy it is to share it either on
YouTube, or on other social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. I would like to
give some background about YouTube, and the rhetorically analyze their message
and policies and how the people interact there.
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim created YouTube in 2005. After
that, it was bought by google in 2006 for 1.65 US billion dollars. Since then, google
maintained YouTube and gave it many improvements such as the ability to advertise,
livestream, etc. About one billion users around the world use YouTube actively and
that is third of the internet’s population, and 80% of those users are from the outside
of the United States. Moreover, YouTube has organized many events on the site such
as its own anniversary, film festivals, space lab, and many more.
In YouTube, the user can subscribe to channels, rate videos, comment on
them, and share them on other websites. An endless amount of content can be
found on YouTube for everyone, and that includes news, music, gaming, science and
much, much more.
The first aspect that I would like to analyze in YouTube is the message and
policies. What YouTube wants their users to have is the ability to connect, inform,
and give inspiration to others around the world. Moreover, YouTube wants to be a
distribution platform for content creators so they can share it with everyone.
Moreover, YouTube has its own rules and policies, and they are simple to follow. They
divide their rules to a few categories, and I would like to analyze each one of them.
The first category is Community Guidelines. The first rule there is users must
respect the community of YouTube. They try to be informal when they explain their
rules, and in this rule they want their users to not abuse the use of this site, and
users must act responsible and follow the rules in order to have a respectful
community. The second rule on the community guidelines is don’t cross the line. This
one in itself contains seven rules that YouTube classifies as common-sense rules.
The first rule on this guideline is no nudity or sexual content. YouTube is not a
pornographic site for users to post such things, and if such video was posted
it will be removed. The second rule is about violent or graphic content. It is not
allowed in
YouTube to upload such videos just because the user wants to share violent videos in
YouTube. There must be a reason for the user to upload the video, or otherwise he
might encourage others to do violent acts. However, violent videos are allowed if
they were to be used in a documentary and such, as long as there is good reason for
them. The third rule is no hateful content. YouTube wants their users to know that
they support freedom of expression. However, they do not allow videos that
promote violence against a specific race, religion, gender, age, etc. If the video’s
purpose was to promote violent against a certain group, then it is considered
crossing the line. The fourth rule is no spamming, scamming, or misleading. YouTube
does not allow users to put unrelated tags in their videos just for the sake of views.
Moreover, YouTube does not allow users to post a large amount of the same content,
and that includes videos, comments, and messages. The fifth rule is about harmful or
dangerous content. Uploaders must not encourage actions that might get the viewer
badly hurt, especially kids. If a video was showing such thing, then it will get
agerestricted, or even removed, depending on how dangerous it is. The sixth rule,
and probably most important one, is about copyrights. Of course, stealing videos and
posting them as your own is illegal, and users might be flagged for that. Moreover,
even putting music that is not allowed to be used, or showing unlicensed programs in
the video is a violation of copyrights. According to how much the user has violated
copyrights, his or her video might get silenced, or even deleted, and the user might
get a copyright strike that will affect his status. The last rule is about threat. This
includes personal threats, harassments, stalking, invading privacy, etc. YouTube is
strict about this rule and they will permanently ban anyone who is caught doing such
acts.
The long list above was about the second community guideline. The third is
about reports. In this case, reports are comments or videos that get flagged by users,
YouTube review these flagged videos and deal with them accordingly. If a video
violates their community guidelines, they will get removed, if not, the videos might
get age restricted. If a user was continuously violating the guidelines, his account
might get terminated, and he won’t be able to create a new account.
The fourth, and last, community guideline is to join in and have fun. In this
guideline, YouTube wants their users are what making their site, and that there are a
lot of people who are creating a lot of things, and that the user can be one of these
people. Moreover, the encourage users in this guideline to give feedback by
commenting on videos and rating them. YouTube want their users to know that they
can comment anything, be at feelings, or to enter a contest, or in any way they want,
as long as it was done respectfully.
