The AP wrote a story in the wake of the "cheerleader beatdown" case about YouTube's legal culpability (basically, they are not responsible for what their users post). That said, YouTube's own policies call for the removal of clips that show someone getting "hurt, attacked or humiliated." Remember, in this particular incident, the girls never had a chance to post it to YouTube themselves. The volume of videos uploaded to YouTube makes enforcing this policy challenging unless people actively report these videos.

What I wanted to clarify (following on my last post on this) is that I don't believe these girls were going to post this video to become "famous" as the news media has been reporting. These types of bullying videos are posted "just for our friends." Ask teens about what they were thinking when they post the fight videos (which ultimately get them in trouble) and that's what they will tell you. On the other hand, the more dangerous "Jackass"-like stunt videos, mainly posted by boys, are posted with the goal of becoming "internet famous" or going viral. The latest debacle chronicled here.

I think it's important to differentiate and be clear about the motivation behind bullying/fighting video from stunt videos as we have this discussion about teens posting on YouTube. Because of these different motivations, it will be easier to encourage reporting of stunt videos where people are getting hurt and more difficult to encourage reporting of bullying videos intended for a small circle of friends. Either way, reporting should be a part of the cyberethics discussion. Remember both of these behaviors have been around forever (yes, boys did silly stunts even before "Jackass"), they are just using the media tools they have grown up with to broadcast this to either "just their friends" or to the world. And in the cheerleader case, the news media (and Dr. Phil) made these girls internationally famous -- something that I don't believe was their intention if they had posted the video.

Posted by anastasia